The Precaution Presumption

Abstract

Abstract The precautionary principle is a central, if controversial, feature of international legal argument. I explore this controversy through a pluralist lens. What makes the precautionary principle so controversial is that it prevents us from appreciating risk holistically, particularly when appraising responses to policy trilemmas. Instead, claims of precaution focus only on some risks to the exclusion of others. I argue that we can overcome this problem by treating precaution as an evidentiary principle. This approach translates competing precautionary claims into a holistic appreciation of risk in its full factual context. I analyse that existing evidentiary conceptions of precaution (precaution as burden shift and precaution as standard-lowering) do not adequately achieve this goal. I submit that these problems can be overcome when treating precaution as an evidentiary presumption and develop how to formulate it.