Environmental Jurisprudence: Evolution, Principles, And The Judicial Role In A Globalized World
- IJLLR Journal
- Apr 20
- 1 min read
Louis Mohan Paul, LLM, ICFAI University, Dehradun.
Dr. Shalini Bahuguna, Associate Professor, Department of Law, ICFAI University, Dehradun.
ABSTRACT
The most significant and fastest growing field in present day jurisprudence has been environmental jurisprudence. Developed in the context of an expanding global environmental problem, it has now come to be the domain of constitutional principles and activism, constitutional and international treaty law, having its origins in pollution control laws. This article retraces the path taken by environmental jurisprudence from initial efforts to limit the negative externalities generated by industries and the imaginative development of the right to life under Article 21 of the Indian constitution by the Indian Supreme Court, from the Trail Smelter Arbitration to the famous Urgenda decision in the Netherlands. This article analyses the underlying themes of environmental jurisprudence sustainable development, precaution and polluter pays principles and intergenerational equity and how courts have given expression to them in the international and Indian arenas, rendering them enforceable laws. The article will also seek to address the great irony of environmental jurisprudence: that at a time when rights-based judicial environmentalism is at its most potent, the disconnect between the law and reality has been at its widest. This paper contend that the way forward is not through adding to the list of environmental rights, but through creating the institutional, political and social conditions under which those rights could be effective.
Keywords: Environmental jurisprudence, sustainable development, precautionary principle, polluter pays, judicial activism, public interest litigation, constitutional environmental rights.
