Specialist environment courts: an interactional theory for legitimacy

Specialist environment courts are, in the main, reflective of highly dynamic forms of adjudication, mixing judicial forms with powers more traditionally found in the executive. However, despite their novel legal nature the literature on specialist environment courts is predominantly promotional and it fails to address the challenges to legitimacy and governance engendered by these institutions. Nor does it evince a robust theory of environmental adjudication. These omissions not only impoverish the discourse but practice unsupported by theory is creating an unstable edifice. This thesis develops a new theoretical model capable of explaining and accommodating environmental adjudication. The theory suggests that normative legitimacy will be fostered if the adjudicatory body responds to, rather than ignores, the inherent nature of the problems it is charged with resolving. Further, to ârespondâ appropriately necessitates an interactional process. In the context of environmental adjudication four factors are indivisible parts of the whole: identifying the inherent nature of environmental problems; acknowledging the commensurate challenges for law and dispute-resolution; developing legal principles, procedure and remedies that respond to those challenges; and acknowledging that particular adjudicative forms and functions can facilitate this process