The Relationship between Domestic and International Environmental Law

• Author: Tseming Yang
• Pages: 13-21

CHAPTER 2

The Relationship between Domestic

and International Environmental Law

TSEMING YANG*

The connections between domestic and international law have proliferated

in the last few decades as a direct result of the explosive growth of interna-

tional environmental law. Yet most environmental lawyers remain relatively

unaware of the effects of this trend even though it is increasingly affecting

the practice of environmental law itself.1 Where most of the rest of this book

provides background on the specific substantive content of global environ-

mental laws, both international regimes as well as the environmental law

systems of other countries, this chapter addresses the formal legal relation-

ship between international environmental law and U.S. domestic law and

questions of implementation.

I. Relationship of International Environmental

Law to U.S. Domestic Law

The rapid growth of international environmental law in the past four decades

has been driven primarily by the proliferation of environmental treaties and

agreements, the predominant source of new international environmental

law. In their substantive scope, they have covered the gamut of environmen-

tal and natural resource issues, including climate change,2 ozone depletion,3

biodiversity conservation,4 hazardous waste trade,5 trade in endangered spe-

cies,6 migratory species conservation,7 chemicals management,8 desertifica-

tion,9 marine pollution,10 and whaling.11 Their participation levels range

from multilateral agreements that have universal or near universal member-

ship to regional12 or bilateral treaties.13 Details about the substantive content

of these agreements are left to subsequent chapters.

Given the broad and growing scope of international environmental law,

how then does it connect with domestic law? With respect to treaties,

domestic legal processes are relevant in the treaty-making process, in the

incorporation of treaties into the U.S. law, and the domestic application/

*I am grateful to Charles Lane for excellent research assistance and to David Gravallese

for his valuable comments on an earlier draft of the chapter.

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