Category Archives: Land use and Environment
‘States May do Away with Single Family Zoning, But What About the Covenants?’
Ken Stahl, ‘The Power of the State Legislature to Invalidate Private Deed Restrictions’, 50 Pepperdine Law Review 579 (2023). In recent years, some states have attempted to address the US housing crisis by pulling certain aspects of zoning control that affect housing supply away from local governments. In a few states, this preemption focuses on […]
Ralf Michaels, ‘Towards Sustainable Private Law Theory’
ABSTRACT Sustainability presents the most pressing need for our world today. Private law plays a prominent role for that need. Yet when responses are considered for private law, they tend to be small – a right to repair, for example, or extended warranty periods, or new internationally mandatory rules in private international law – and […]
‘Sustainability and the public-private divide’
INTRODUCTION Sustainability concerns such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and inequality are the defining issues of our time (Dyer 2024; Hickel 2020; Steffen et al 2015). The relationship between these issues and human activities is, to a notable extent, influenced by legal ideas on the rights, freedoms, and duties of different parties such as individuals, […]
Emmanuel Slautsky, ‘Climate litigation, separation of powers and federalism à la belge: a commentary of the Belgian climate case’
INTRODUCTION Climate litigation is booming worldwide. Belgium is no exception to that trend. In the latest development, on 30 November 2023, at the start of COP 28, the Brussels Court of Appeal delivered its long-awaited ruling in the climate case (Klimaatzaak/Affaire climat), the Belgian counterpart to the well-known Dutch Urgenda case. the Belgian ruling is […]
Wildner and Dolmans, ‘Sustainable Fiduciary Duties – the Time Has Come for Financial Fiduciaries to Adapt to the New Climate Reality’
ABSTRACT There is increasing debate about the role of fiduciaries in the context of the climate and nature loss crises. Some suggest that asset managers and fiduciaries should focus solely on maximizing financial returns. Others take the view that they should actively pursue climate mitigation and sustainability in their investment policy. But are these views […]
Dadush, Schönfelder and Streibelt, ‘What the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive Says About Contract’
ABSTRACT This policy brief was prepared by the Responsible Contracting Project to analyze the content of the newly adopted EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) with respect to commercial contracts. On July 5, 2024, the CSDDD was published in the Official Journal of the European Union. It will enter into force on July 25, […]
‘Consumer Law, Social and Ecological Justice: Charting the Crossroads’
In 2004, a group of scholars signed a collective work with the evocative title ‘Social Justice in European Contract Law: A Manifesto’. Starting from the idea that private contract law had the potential to shape the future of the European Union, the document aimed to achieve two main objectives: 1. The construction of a European […]
‘Reconfiguring contract law through sustainability’
Though not the centrepiece, sustainability was already on the radar of the Manifesto for Social Justice in European Contract Law in 2004: ‘It is important to align the general principles of social justice that govern the market order with standards designed to protect public goods such as a healthy environment’. Twenty years later, as humanity […]
‘How the EU Can Avoid Green Colonialism’
Twenty years after its publication, the Manifesto for Social Justice in Contract Law’s call to ‘align the general principles of social justice that govern the market order with standards designed to protect public goods such as a healthy environment’ continues to resonate. The traditional definition of social justice – focused on the fair and equal […]
‘Private Law Fairness between Generations?’
Distributive justice is an essential element of social justice. When discussing distributive justice in private law, one important question is: a fair distribution between whom? For example, is a consumer protection instrument that strengthens the position of societally strong consumers, but is less important for weak ones (like much of the information paradigm), ‘social’? The […]