Komparativ ret

Sustainability requirements in the maritime sector and contracts

Vincenzo Battistella Marinucci

CEPRI, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen

Mail: vincenzo.battistella@jur.ku.dk 

Tel.:  + 45 35 32 92 45 

Web: https://jura.ku.dk/english/staff/research/?pure=en/persons/608100

Starting date: 1 December 2022

Completion date:  30 November 2025

Project description:
In this project I will analyze the legal implications of sustainable development pertaining to maritime law, particularly on maritime contracts. I will consider the implications of new impending contractual obligations emerging from the necessity of preventing air pollution from ships. Next I will evaluate various relevant aspects of contract law in a comparative perspective between civil and common law legal systems, such the evolution of the concept of good faith in common law and how environmental norms have impacted the behavior of the parties in contract law. Furthermore, I will also explore some aspect of port law namely the compliance by port States with international regulations on the reduction of carbon emissions from ships.To conclude I will investigate the possible interpretation of sustainability clauses in maritime contracts and the enforcement of these provisions in the case of not compliance with the international sustainability obligations.

Taking Rights of Nature and Human Rights Seriously

Katarina Hovden

Centre for European and Comparative Legal Studies (CECS), Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen

Mail: katarina.hovden@jur.ku.dk  

Tel.:  + 45 42 72 62 91 

Web: https://jura.ku.dk/english/staff/research/?pure=en/persons/604967  

Starting date: 1 September 2017

Completion date:  31 August 2021

Project description:
Rights of nature are gaining traction. Several countries have adopted rights of nature laws (at constitutional, national, and local level) or recognised the rights of nature in court judgments. These laws and legal sources inter alia recognise that nature is a subject of the law, and, in certain cases, grant specific legal rights to nature. Born out of an Earth-centred or ecological paradigm, rights of nature (laws) present a fundamental challenge to the otherwise anthropocentric or human-centric system of law and governance.
Set against these developments, the PhD project studies the relationship(s) between the rights of nature and human rights in jurisdictions that recognise both categories of right-holders. Mindful that most legal and governance systems remain anthropocentric, individualistic and mechanistic in their very structure, the project will investigate what happens at the interface between the old paradigm (most existing individual human rights) and the new, ecological paradigm (the rights of nature). Questions to be explored include> When rights conflict (as they often do), whose rights prevail and under what circumstances? Is there a risk that the prevailing (anthropocentric) legal order will subsume and swallow the ecological one, rendering the rights of nature “mere rhetoric”? If so, what would it take for the ecological paradigm to penetrate the anthropocentric machinery of law?