A Study on the Development of Legal Theory related to International Environmental Law

Abstract

International Environmental law is a field that has made much progress through a variety of international conventions, resolutions, declarations, guidelines, action plan such as the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992, the Framework Convention on Climate Change and its protocols in 1992, the Stockholm Declarations in 1972, the World Natural Charter in 1982, and the Rio Declarations in 1992. The common awareness of the international community on the importance of the global environment has brought controversy about the protection of the earth environment and state responsibility. In this regard, international society has introduced a number of legal principles and approaches, which have played a crucial role in the development and proliferation of international environmental law in order to solve the problems of international environmental law. At the same time, however, the legal principles and approaches have been criticized for lack of legal binding force and specificity. Research on the international environmental law has been published consistently in the Korea International Law Review. Therefore, it is very meaningful to look at the development aspect of legal theory in the filed of the international environmental law through the Korea International Law Review for the 20th anniversary of the Korea International Law Review. There is a limit to the facts that results of this study can not be generalized since scope of this research is restricted to the Korea International Law Review. However, many great scholars of the international law academic community have published articles on the Korea International Law Review. Thus, it is worthwhile that this paper can partially infer perspective of the international law academic community in korea. This research attempts to classify the articles of the Korea International Law Review concerning the international environmental law by time and a subject so as to understand advance of law theory and research trends over time.