David M Scott (Queen Mary University of London) has posted Time and Temporality before the ICJ in the Advisory Opinion on Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The ICJ’s Advisory Opinion on Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change is one of a string of recent cases which has brought the ICJ to the centre of public discussions of international law (see coverage of proceedings on the BBC, the Guardian, and Forbes), and academic commentators have already noted the significance of the case for procedural rules on the participation of small island developing states and amicus curiae from NGOs, the establishing of obligations erga omnes, and the Court’s use of experts fantômes. In this short post, I focus on a different aspect of the Advisory Opinion: namely, its temporal significance, as a decision over when climate change began, how it manifests in our present, and how it will develop in the future.