LSAT 154, Section 3, RC Passage 4, International Environmental Law

RC Passage 4 Explanation

Paragraph Summaries

1. Scholars focus on “customary international law” (CIL) customs when formal statues prohibiting nations to cause environmental damage to others don’t exist. CIL has 2 principles/norms: 1) nations shouldn’t cause harm to outside their borders, and 2) nations should avoid putting other nations at risk of environmental harm.
2. Many CIL “norms” actually don’t reflect nations’ actual behaviours.
3. These “norms” are just standards nations use to justify their own actions while criticizing others’. Thus, these “norms” aren’t actually norms of CIL. They’re just an ideological system that represents the international community’s ideas.
4. Thus scholars who use CIL to decide international environment law cases are misdirecting their efforts. Instead, scholars should aim to negotiate formal treaties to hold nations to standards of environmental conduct.

Analysis

This law passage talks about how scholars of international environment law default to using customary international law principles and norms when there aren’t any formal statutes.

Paragraph 1 introduces the two principles that have become norms in CIL: 1) nations shouldn’t harm other nations’ environment, and 2) just don’t but others at risk of environmental harm.

Paragraph 2 talks about the problem with CIL: nations don’t actually follow these norms. They only profess to.

Paragraph 3 talks about why while nations don’t follow the norms, they profess to accept them. It’s because they want to justify their actions, and judge other nations. Therefore, these “norms” aren’t actually norms.

Paragraph 4 advises that international environment law scholars shouldn’t focus on using CIL as basis for cases. Instead, they should direct their attention towards forming actual treaties. This way, nations can be held to an appropriate standard.