Rights, reasons, and international norms

Abstract

This article focuses on access to environmental justice. In particular, the article focuses on the right to remedy and redress articulated in Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration 1992 and the effective transposition of the principle in domestic law by interrogating three recent decisions from the senior courts in England and Wales, Ireland, and New Zealand concerning the reasons given for environmental decisions. These decisions provide substantive justification for reasoned decisionmaking so that interested persons are given the human dignity of knowing what was decided and why, for viewing this question from the perspective of a person who did not participate in the proceedings, for avoiding judicial deference on appeal by requiring that original decisions should be objectively reasonable and based on sound evidence, and (as a matter of natural justice) focusing remedial discretion on quashing defective decisions.