This chapter focuses on the domestic drivers of workers’ turn to international litigation by examining the political landscape that pushed organized labor in Turkey and the UK to seek remedies at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The chapter begins by explaining why the Court issued its most important rulings on trade union rights in response to cases from these two countries, despite the stark differences in their political and economic regimes. In both contexts, neoliberal reforms closed off domestic avenues for contestation, albeit through different mechanisms: violent repression in Turkey following the 1980 military coup, and institutional disempowerment of trade unions in the UK under Thatcher. Drawing on original data, the analysis shows that Turkey and the UK account for the largest number and the most important trade union rights cases brought before the ECtHR. The chapter challenges regime-based explanations and instead highlights how declining political opportunity structures under neoliberalism drove legal mobilization beyond the nation-state. In doing so, it sets the stage for the next chapter’s examination of how cases from these two countries helped reshape the ECtHR’s labor rights jurisprudence.

The Mono Lake case was followed by a surge of interest across the nation in use of the public trust doctrine as a tool of environmental advocacy, and in some jurisdictions, a statement of environmental rights. This chapter reviews the ongoing development of the doctrine around the United States: the different forms of law through which it operates, the different resources it protects, different values vindicated, and even different legal theories about the nature of the doctrine itself. The variety reveals there is no such thing as “the American public trust doctrine,” only a tapestry of related implementations of the public trust principles at the core of the doctrine – the partnered state trustee obligations and corresponding public rights. The chapter also considers the contested intersection between the trust and federal law. While scholars debate the existence of a federal trust, the doctrine is increasingly recognized as a background principle of state property law for the purposes of takings litigation under the federal Fifth Amendment. In a little-known chapter of Supreme Court history, the justices negotiated not to address the role of the trust in takings litigation.

The Introduction outlines the significance of the book within the context three fields of scholarship: British imperialism in China, law within the British Empire and Borderland studies. It provides an introduction to the British imperial presence in Xinjiang and Yunnan, an explanation of sources used and an outline of the chapters of the book.

This chapter discusses the landmark Mono Lake litigation that finally reached the California Supreme Court, National Audubon Society vs. Superior Court – the case that turned the tide for the survival of Mono Lake, through public trust reasoning that would go on to foment a quiet revolution in environmental law. The chapter reviews the basic elements of the litigation, introducing the parties, their commanding legal avatars, and their overall positions before unpacking the specific arguments that made it to court. Then it highlights the most important doctrinal features of the landmark decision, including its affirmation that environmental values are protected by the public trust doctrine, its application of the doctrine to the upper reaches of the watershed, its assertion that public trust obligations extend over time, and its understanding of the legal nature of the doctrine itself. In casting the doctrine as a nonwaivable obligation to protect environmental values for future generations – a quasi-constitutional constraint on sovereign authority – the decision set the stage for its recognition as a tool of environmental law, and perhaps even a framework for environmental rights.

This chapter continues the book’s focus on the indirect effects of international litigation, examining how pending cases can help spur social movements at the domestic level. It analyzes the case of KESK, Turkey’s public sector union confederation, which mobilized international human rights law to carve out space for union organizing amid post-coup repression in the 1990s. Even before favorable rulings were issued, KESK activists invoked the authority of ratified treaties and the threat of ECtHR litigation to legitimize their demands, attract new members, and challenge state restrictions. In the post-2000 period, however, the AKP government shifted to more covert tactics, cultivating a clientelist relationship with a pro-government union to marginalize KESK and stifle dissent. As its organizing strength weakened, KESK increasingly turned to litigation, but ECtHR rulings proved ineffective at disrupting the structural constraints unions faced. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork data and archival material, the chapter shows how litigation evolved from a dynamic tool of mobilization into a strategy of documentation and symbolic resistance. KESK’s trajectory underscores a key insight of the book: the transformative potential of international courts depends less on their enforcement power than on the strength, strategy, and mobilization capacity of grassroots actors.

This chapter explores “trust-rights” climate litigation, claiming sovereign obligations to protect the atmosphere, public rights to climate stability, or both. It begins with scholarly consideration of these strategies, reviewing sources of environmental rights, application of public trust principles to climate, and critiques of the atmospheric trust. It reveals the hidden duality of trust-rights climate claims as a pairing of reciprocal rights and duties. Then it reviews the explosion of trust-rights climate advocacy around the world, including the conclusion in Urgenda Foundation v. Netherlands that the nation had failed its duty under the European Convention on Human Rights to limit contributions to climate change; the failed attempt in Juliana v. United States to partner an atmospheric trust claim with constitutional rights asserted under the Due Process Clause; and a new generation of advocacy to build trust-rights principles into U.S. state constitutions. Finally, it considers the arguments against – and in favor of – trust-rights advocacy, addressing both constitutional concerns about the separation of powers and practical concerns about bringing uncertain impact litigation.

The chapter discusses the key elements of the Bank of England’s legal mandate and whether these can serve as a legal basis for supporting environmental sustainability policies as part of its monetary and financial stability objectives. Section 2.1 discusses central bank mandates and objectives generally by exploring the regime or legal formulation that authorises central banks to provide for policy decision-making and its implementation regarding managing climate risks. Section 2.2 considers the Bank’s mandate and environmental sustainability by examining the arrangements provided by the Bank of England Act 1998 for the Bank to take the government’s economic policy into account when pursuing its secondary objectives. Section 2.3 analyzes the meaning of ‘secondary objectives’ for the Bank and how these are set either via legislation or via remit letters. Section 2.4 discusses how central banks in practice can support secondary objectives whilst pursuing their primary objectives. Section 2.5 analyzes the problem of legal uncertainty regarding the Bank’s ability to support an environmental sustainability policy, given that this is only specified in remit letters, and argues that there would be greater legal certainty if there were an explicit reference to sustainable environmental policy as a secondary objective in its statutory objectives. Section 2.6 considers the general question of whether central banks should discriminate in favour of green assets. Section 2.7 concludes that the Bank has a duty to ensure that material physical and transition risks are incorporated into monetary and financial stability policy and that this should be clearly stated in its governing law.

This chapter, the first to our knowledge, examines whether central banks in Caribbean small island states have the necessary legal and institutional frameworks to achieve the global central banking community’s pledge to contribute to net-zero and safeguard financial stability from climate change. We find that the legal mandates of the central banks studied do not extend to climate change or sustainability. However, climate-related risks, if qualified as financial risks, fall within their financial stability mandate. Further, the path to net-zero is limited by the existing internal capacity of central banks, which is not geared towards climate science. This is not surprising since climate change has fairly recently moved beyond the acceptable risk tolerance of central banks, and only now is a response being fashioned. We argue that the region faces a high boundary risk with respect to net-zero. We note that even if Caribbean central banks are equipped with a mandate and policy tools to address climate change, net-zero may still not be achievable where climate change public policies are absent or not fully articulated. Further, Caribbean economies carry a heavy weighting to climate-sensitive or carbon-relevant sectors. Hence, net-zero may only be achieved with the involvement of committed governments.

Central banks are promising a more climate-based focus on matters ranging from communication to prudential regulation and supervision, including monetary policy. The chapter examines the various arguments that analyze whether the European Central Bank (ECB) can tackle climate change, in light of its mandates. In our view, climate change fits within the narrower central bank mandates, focused on price stability, while other ‘peripheral’ mandates and ‘transversal’ environmental principles can play a supporting role. Prudential regulation and supervision can also be a main point for assimilation. Finally, we examine the considerations of courts of climate change when scrutinizing governmental action and compare them to the considerations of courts of ECB acts. We conclude that the integration of sustainability considerations, and especially climate change, into the ECB price stability mandate seems to be on relatively firm legal ground.

Climate risks pose significant financial challenges that align with the stability mandates of central banks and supervisors. They can lead to economic losses impacting households, firms, and financial institutions, potentially threatening financial stability. Current supervisory efforts have focused on microprudential policies, with the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) establishing a comprehensive approach across the Basel Framework’s three pillars. However, the systemic nature of climate risks necessitates macroprudential responses as well. Like other systemic risks, climate risks are widespread in financial markets and can lead to amplified financial disruptions. However, unlike other systemic risks, climate risks are foreseeable and irreversible, although they are subject to uncertainty in timing and outcomes. This chapter argues that effective macroprudential measures, such as systemic capital buffers and concentration limits, can enhance resilience and mitigate future risks but require careful calibration to avoid adverse effects. Against this background, and given that immediate action is essential to prevent delayed responses that could exacerbate financial instability, central banks and supervisors could prioritize large institutions and high-risk sectors in initial implementations.

The book makes three arguments. First, it argues that frontier consuls played a key role in creating forms of transfrontier legal authority. Second, it demonstrates that the impetus behind these legal adaptations was the perceived challenges brought by the movement of British subjects and goods across frontiers. Local and transfrontier mobility therefore defined and shaped British jurisdiction across the frontier. Finally, British authority in the frontiers embraced and worked alongside other local norms and legal structures. This book is therefore the story of British consuls at the edge of the British and Chinese Empires and the nature of their legal powers.