Reconceptualising specialist environment courts and tribunals

Abstract

Specialist environment courts and tribunals (SECs) are, in the main, reflective of highly dynamic forms of adjudication, mixing judicial forms with powers more traditionally found in the executive. However, despite their novel legal nature the literature on SECs is predominantly promotional and it fails to address the challenges to legitimacy and governance engendered by these institutions. Nor does it evince a robust theory of environmental adjudication. These omissions not only impoverish the discourse but practice unsupported by theory is creating an unstable edifice. To illustrate this point the difficulties experienced in New Zealand are examined. The argument is made that only by confronting the challenges created by SECs can we begin to lay the foundations for a new theoretical model capable of explaining and accommodating environmental adjudication.

Judicializing Environmental Governance? The Case of Transnational Corporate Accountability

“…A similar yet slightly different perspective on institutional legitimacy is offered by Ceri Warnock (2017). Her work on specialist environmental courts finds that legitimacy is constructed through an interactional process in which judges respond to the nature of environmental problems, acknowledge their complexity, and develop a legal tool kit to address these challenges ( Warnock 2017( Warnock , 2020.…”

“…A similar yet slightly different perspective on institutional legitimacy is offered by Ceri Warnock (2017). Her work on specialist environmental courts finds that legitimacy is constructed through an interactional process in which judges respond to the nature of environmental problems, acknowledge their complexity, and develop a legal tool kit to address these challenges ( Warnock 2017( Warnock , 2020. In other words, they develop interactional expertise that puts them in a "privileged" position to resolve questions of transnational environmental accountability more effectively and equitably than other institutions.…”

Executive Environmental Law

“…203 It is also why there has been a concern to adapt adjudication so it can address environmental problems. 204 More significantly, the richness of legal reasoning and legal doctrines accommodates different lawmaking initiatives over time, and the competing views that exist in regards to an environmental law problem. 205 My point is not that law is perfect at doing these things, but given the complexity of environmental problems, the substantive nature of law has an important 'law job' to play.…”