This book explores the development of one of our oldest legal principles – the public trust doctrine – which holds that some natural resources are so important to everyone that they cannot belong to anyone, and so the government must protect them for the benefit of all the people. Framing the core public trust principle as a partnership of sovereign obligations and environmental rights, it examines how trust principles fill an important gap in environmental law – and perhaps even constitutional law. The book highlights the epic tale of the fall and rise of Mono Lake – the strange and beautiful Dead Sea of California – and how groundbreaking litigation protecting it became an inflection point in the development of the trust as a tool of environmental law. It explores how the common law doctrine became tasked with protecting environmental interests, and how public trust principles have been instantiated in wider legal frameworks to protect an even broader array of natural resources, including climate stability. The Introduction traces how the doctrine buttresses inherent weaknesses in the foundations of U.S. environmental law, providing needed support for environmental governance.

As environmental devastation in the Mono Basin gathered speed, local resistance gathered force. Scientists who studied the unique geologic and biological resources in the area raised the alarm of impending ecologic collapse. Residents feared for their health and their livelihoods, as water exports eroded the lake at the center of their public lands tourism economy. Gradually, a coalition of locals, students, scientists, birders, fishers, hunters, lawyers, politicians, and government agency staff coalesced around the idea that something had to be done. This chapter explores how that unlikely coalition joined together to mobilize political support for the lake’s preservation, reviewing the origins of the Mono Lake advocacy movement and the strategic legal and political choices they made in laying foundation for the eventual litigation.Volunteers launched a state-wide campaign to “Save Mono Lake,” raising awareness while cultivating relationships with the Angelenos who relied on exported Mono Basin water. The campaign eventually drew inspiration from a good idea, published by a legal scholar and championed by a student who read it in college: the common law public trust doctrine.

This chapter shifts attention to the indirect effects of international litigation, specifically, how grassroots mobilization can be shaped in the shadow of official law. It examines the case of the Blacklist Support Group (BSG), a network of construction workers in UK who were blacklisted for their union activism. Even without favorable rulings from the ECtHR, BSG activists used the litigation process to amplify their claims, attract media attention, and apply political pressure. The chapter introduces the concept of “on-stage” and “off-stage” mobilization to describe how workers adopted an instrumental approach to human rights, invoking them in public campaigns while continuing to ground their internal discourse and solidarity ties in class-based themes. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, media coverage, and parliamentary debates, the chapter shows how BSG’s strategic mobilization of human rights yielded concrete victories – including major settlements, exclusion of blacklisting firms from public contracts, and formal investigations into police surveillance – that reshaped the political terrain for labor activism.

More and more supervisors embark on the climate stress testing journey, which is still, even though progress has been made over the last years, new ground for supervisors and financial institutions alike. Good practices and practical guidelines are a crucial element for the industry to further progress and align on climate stress testing practices. This chapter provides an overview of key design considerations for climate stress testing and their differences from traditional stress testing, whereby the focus is on conducting such exercises for supervisory (i.e., microprudential) and institution-specific purposes.

The chapter analyses how the climate change action plan developed by the European Central Bank (ECB) as part of its monetary policy strategy review in 2020-2021 is aligned with the ECB’s mandate set out in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and the Treaty on European Union. The Treaties require the ECB to integrate climate change considerations into its monetary policy and to contribute to the EU’s objectives regarding climate change, as established by Regulation (EU) 2021/1119, the European Climate Law. However, there are also legal limits on the action the ECB can take in this field. The chapter examines the key measures proposed as part of the plan from a legal perspective, including measures related to macroeconomic forecasts and models, the collection of statistical information for climate change risk analysis, the enhancement of risk assessment capabilities, asset purchase programmes, and possible changes to the collateral framework. It also considers the questions regarding the ECB’s democratic legitimacy and accountability that arise in this context.

The second chapter demonstrates how the movement of different people, such as migrant labourers and itinerant domiciled subjects, shaped colonial and extraterritorial law (1911–25). Consuls petitioned for greater powers of deportation to remove unwanted Indian migrants across the frontier. Consuls also petitioned the metropolitan, Indian and China consular authorities to enable Burmese officers to exercise colonial law across borders by virtue of extraterritoriality. This chapter is therefore concerned with the relationship between borders, colonial law and extraterritoriality.

“This chapter develops a theoretical framework to explain why grassroots activists pursue litigation at international courts and how these efforts can reshape domestic social movements. It begins by situating the turn to international litigation within a context of domestic constraint and transnational opportunity, emphasizing the critical role of lawyers in identifying viable venues and guiding activists through strategic litigation. Moving beyond conventional, state-centered assessments of compliance, the chapter argues that international courts can shape domestic politics in more indirect but transformative ways. Even before a ruling is issued, litigation can embolden activists, legitimize their claims, and expand the repertoire of mobilization by attracting new allies, resources, and tactics. Drawing on sociolegal and social movement scholarship, the chapter develops the concept of “strategic mobilization of human rights” to describe how activists deploy rights language pragmatically to advance preexisting goals. Rather than transforming group identity or legal consciousness, rights frameworks often serve as tactical tools – mobilized when useful, discarded when not. The chapter concludes by identifying the conditions under which international litigation is more likely to catalyze domestic mobilization.”

The discourse and trials revolving around Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) stem from substantial shifts and advancements within the financial landscape of the past decade. Emerging within the broader sphere of Fintech, these technological strides, often linked to disruptive innovations, have been championed by entrepreneurs aiming to drive essential progress towards universal financial inclusion. Notably, initiatives like Libra Coin, once spearheaded by the now-defunct Libra Consortium, were specifically geared towards fostering financial inclusion globally, especially within economies grappling with inefficient payment infrastructures. Amid the surge of CBDC projects in response to private global stablecoins, a critical query arises: do they genuinely enhance financial inclusion compared to traditional fiat currencies reliant on established public-private payment frameworks? This chapter navigates this dilemma by scrutinizing pivotal attributes of CBDCs and the spectrum of design choices accessible to central bankers and governments. It addresses key challenges confronting CBDCs in advancing financial inclusion, analyzes potential alternatives to CBDCs — specifically, instant payment systems — and contextualizes CBDCs within the broader challenge of preserving the centrality of central banks and fostering financial inclusion. This assessment also considers the issues associated with upholding democratic values.