June 2026

A decade ago, a company could print “eco-friendly” on packaging, run a campaign about “carbon neutral” products, and face little more than reputational risk if the claim turned out to be thin or fabricated. Regulators were slow. Courts were cautious. Consumers were largely unable to challenge what they read on a label. That landscape has […]

Every major infrastructure project built in the last fifty years has had to answer a question that did not exist before 1970: what will this do to the environment? That question is the foundation of Environmental Impact Assessment. Before the United States passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 1969 and introduced the Environmental

On July 23, 2025, the International Court of Justice delivered a ruling from the Peace Palace in The Hague that legal scholars, climate advocates, and government lawyers had been preparing for years. In a unanimous decision, the fifteen judges of the world’s highest court ruled that states are legally obliged under international law to protect

There is a word entering legal conversations at every level of government, from city councils in Europe to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. It is appearing in national criminal codes, in EU directives, in Pacific island state proposals, and in the briefs of corporate lawyers who have started watching it very carefully. Most

A river cannot speak in a courtroom. A forest cannot hire a lawyer. A mountain cannot sign a petition. For centuries, this has meant that nature, no matter how severely harmed, had no legal standing of its own. Only humans, corporations, or governments could bring claims to defend it, and only when they could show