2021–2027 Recovery Plan for Europe and its Recovery and Resilience Facility have altered elements of the EU institutional equilibrium – constitutional consistency of the ensuing design – implications for the constitutional evolution of the EU – analysis of the expenditure of the Recovery and Resilience Facility – new fiscal economic stabilisation function – conditionality attached to the funds – strengthened role of the Council – nuanced multi-level financial governance – the fiscal stabilisation function enshrines a potential form of constitutional mutation – the new institutional framework for the expenditure of the EU funds seems to lean towards an intergovernmental preeminence

According to contemporary nonpositivist theories, legal obligations are a subset of our genuine moral obligations. Debates within nonpositivism then turn on how we delimit the legal “domain” of morality. Recently, nonpositivist theories have come under criticism on two grounds. First, that they are underinclusive, because they cannot explain why paradigmatically “legal” obligations are such. Second, that they are overinclusive, because they count as “legal” certain moral obligations that are plainly nonlegal. This paper undertakes both a ground-clearing exercise for and a defense of nonpositivism. It argues, in particular, that Dworkin's claims about the legal domain of morality in his later work are often mischaracterized by critics, because these critics fail to read these claims in light of his earlier theory of “Law as Integrity.” A nonpositivist theory that unifies Dworkin's earlier and later work, I argue, deals with the criticisms leveled at nonpositivist theories better than other nonpositivist competitors.

International lawyers study international law primarily through its written texts—treaties, official documents, judgments, and scholarly works. Critical to being an international lawyer, it seems, is access to the written word, whether in hard copy or online. Indeed, as Jesse Hohmann observes, “the production of text can come to feel like the very purpose of international law.”

The World Health Organization's (WHO) Constitution affirms, in its preamble, a fundamental and non-discriminatory right to health and health care. In doing so, it echoes a number of widely ratified treaties and other international legal instruments with a strong claim to having the status of customary international law, including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the ILO Convention on Indigenous and Tribal peoples in Independent Countries, and the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. Most recently, the Institut de Droit affirmed that same fundamental right in Article 4 of its September 2021 Resolution on Epidemics, Pandemics, and International Law.

Technological innovations and scientific discoveries do not occur in a vacuum but instead leave us needing to reimagine what we thought we knew about the human condition.

Geoengineering involves intentionally modifying the environment on a massive scale and is typically proposed as a last resort to prevent catastrophic harms caused by climate change. Critics argue that there are powerful moral reasons against researching, let alone undertaking, geoengineering. Perhaps most notably, Stephen Gardiner argues that even if we are forced to choose between allowing a climate catastrophe or geoengineering—and geoengineering is the less harmful option—it could still be the case that we ought not to geoengineer. This essay argues for a conditional: if we are indeed forced to choose between catastrophic environmental harm and the less harmful option of geoengineering, then we ought to geoengineer.