Some Perspectives on Global Governance, Judicial Review and Climate Change

Abstract

This article is about the public law reaction to the global governance phenomenon, and in particular about the concerns that have been raised about the accountability and legitimacy deficits associated with global governance institutions which, arguably, need to be addressed from a normative, as opposed to a purely functional, understanding of the concept of global governance. The scholarly debate on these issues has also entered the subject of global environmental governance, where a multiplicity of institutions with overlapping mandates form a non-hierarchical governance system, lacking a single, overarching organisation with the necessary political authority to coordinate the different international environmental regimes and their decision-making. From this perspective, the article then addresses the view that sees a remedy in the systemic linkages between climate change and other international law concerns, and the promise that these linkages hold for facilitating an improved system of supranational governance based on the compliance and enforcement mechanisms created by multilateral environmental agreements.