Legal principles of environmental protection

The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze and discuss different aspects of six selected environmental legal principles and to describe their role in three legal systems: international law, EU law and the Czech law. The chosen principles are: complexity and integrity principle, prevention principle, precautionary principle, access to information and public participation principle, and liability principles including polluter pays principle. The thesis is divided into three main chapters. Chapter One is introductory, defines legal principles from several points of legal - theoretical view and sets basic terminology used in the thesis. Chapter Two focuses on environmental law in its entirety and consists of two parts. The first one describes the system of environmental law and the role of legal principles within, part two enumerates environmental principles expresse d, explicitly or implicitly, in legal theory and crucial documents. Chapter Three is a key part of the thesis as it examines fundamental selected environmental principles in six separate sub-chapters. Each principle is firstly defined and its genesis, importance and significance described , then the author examines legal documents (including court decisions) to show how the given principle behaves in International, European and Czech Law