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Disastrous Law: International Law and the Shock-absorption of Disaster - International Law in Disaster Scenarios: Applicable Rules and Principles. By Flavia Zorzi Giustiniani. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2021. Pp. xiv, 209. Index. - Law and Disaster: Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Meltdown in Japan. By Shigenori Matsui. New York, NY: Routledge, 2019. Pp. xi, 284. Index. - All is Well: Catastrophe and the Making of the Normal State. By Saptarishi Bandopadhyay. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. xiv, 306. Index.

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International Law in Disaster Scenarios: Applicable Rules and Principles. By Flavia Zorzi Giustiniani. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2021. Pp. xiv, 209. Index.
Law and Disaster: Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Meltdown in Japan. By Shigenori Matsui. New York, NY: Routledge, 2019. Pp. xi, 284. Index.
All is Well: Catastrophe and the Making of the Normal State. By Saptarishi Bandopadhyay. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. xiv, 306. Index.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2023

Fleur Johns
Fleur Johns*
Affiliation:
Professor, Faculty of Law & Justice, University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, Australia; Visiting Professor, Department of Business, Economics & Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
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American Journal of International Law , Volume 117 , Issue 1 , January 2023 , pp. 151 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press for The American Society of International Law

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Footnotes

Professor Johns is a recipient of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (project number FT200100656) funded by the Australian government. However, the views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the Australian government or the Australian Research Council. Thanks are due to Bronwen Morgan, Sarah Williams, and anonymous reviewers of the American Journal of International Law for valuable input and to Erol Gorur for research assistance.

References

1 Report of the International Law Commission, Draft Articles on the Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters, with Commentaries, para. 48, UN Doc. A/71/10 (2016) [hereinafter ILC Draft Articles].

2 Id. Art. 3(a), Commentary paras. 4, 10.

3 Diego Lopes da Silva, Nan Tian, Lucie Béraud-Sudreau, Alexandra Marksteiner & Xiao Liang, Trends in World Military Expenditure 2021, SIPRI (2022), at https://www.sipri.org/publications/2022/sipri-fact-sheets/trends-world-military-expenditure-2021.

4 Development Initiatives, Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2022, ch. 3 (2022), at https://devinit.org/resources/global-humanitarian-assistance-report-2022 (reporting a significant rise in the proportion of cross-border humanitarian and development assistance aimed at disaster risk reduction between 2018 and 2020, but at aggregate levels that represent less than 8% of international humanitarian relief and development assistance funding overall, with many countries at highest risk receiving the least).

5 IPCC, 2022: Summary for Policymakers, in Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Working Group II Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 26 (H.-O. Pörtner et al. eds., 2022) (“current global financial flows for [climate] adaptation . . . are insufficient for and constrain implementation of adaptation options especially in developing countries”).

6 Tol, Richard S.J., The Distributional Impact of Climate Change, 1504 Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 63 (2021)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

7 Boyd, Emily et al. , Loss and Damage from Climate Change: A New Climate Justice Agenda, 4 One Earth 1365 (2021)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 McDonald, Jan & McCormack, Phillipa C., Rethinking the Role of Law in Adapting to Climate Change, 12 WIREs Climate Change e726 (2021)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Research Handbook on Climate Disaster Law: Barriers and Opportunities (Rosemary Lyster & Robert R. M. Verchick eds., 2018).

9 Khan, Mizan, Robinson, Stacy-ann, Weikmans, Romain, Ciplet, David & Roberts, J. Timmons, Twenty-Five Years of Adaptation Finance Through a Climate Justice Lens, 161 Climate Change 251, 365 (2020)Google Scholar.

10 On the importance of root cause analysis to contemporary disaster risk reduction, and the ILC's explicit rejection of such an approach, see Aronsson-Storrier, Marie, Beyond Early Warning Systems: Querying the Relationship Between International Law and Disaster Risk (Reduction), 1 Y.B. Int'l Disaster L. 51 (2018)Google Scholar. On the limits of root cause analysis even when adopted, see Marks, Susan, Human Rights and Root Causes, 74 Mod. L. Rev. 57 (2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Flavia Zorzi Giustiniani, International Law in Disaster Scenarios: Applicable Rules and Principles (2021); Shigenori Matsui, Law and Disaster: Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Meltdown in Japan (2019); Saptarishi Bandopadhyay, All Is Well: Catastrophe and the Making of the Normal State (2022).

12 See generally Bartolini, Giulio, A Universal Treaty for Disasters? Remarks on the International Law Commission's Draft Articles on the Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters, 99 Int'l Rev. Red Cross 1103 (2017)Google Scholar; Evangelidis, Elena & O'Donnell, Thérèse, NGOs and the International Law Commission Draft Articles on the Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters: A Relationship of Mutual or Grudging Respect?, 1 Y.B. Int'l Disaster L. Online 116 (2019)Google Scholar; Kälin, Walter, Protection of Victims of Disasters: The “Vertical” Dimension of the Draft Articles on the Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters, 1 Y.B. Int'l Disaster L. Online 28 (2019)Google Scholar; Valencia-Ospina, Eduardo, The Work of the International Law Commission on the “Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters,” 1 Y.B. Int'l Disaster L. Online 5 (2019)Google Scholar.

13 Matsui, supra note 11.

14 William Twining, Reflections on “Law in Context,” in Law in Context: Enlarging a Discipline 36, 40 (William Twining ed., 1997) (“‘Law in Context’. . . proceed[s] from a broader jurisprudential base than does the typical [doctrinal law] textbook, yet . . . seek[s] to preserve as far as possible the rigour associated with the narrower approach.”).

15 Matsui, supra note 11, at 4, 255.

16 Id. at 51.

17 Id. at 243, 250.

18 Id. at 117, 147, 152, 251.

19 Id. at 255.

20 Anne Orford, International Law and the Politics of History (2021).

21 Bandopadhyay, supra note 11, at 76.

22 Id. at 82.

23 Id. at 109–10.

24 Id. at 7–8.

25 Id. at 27.

26 Id. at 18. See generally Björn Hettne, Development and Security: Origins and Future, 41 Secur. Dialogue 31 (2010).

27 Bandopadhyay, supra note 11, at 210.

28 Zorzi Giustiniani, supra note 11, at 69.

29 Id. at 1–2.

30 Id. at 1.

31 Id. at 6–7.

32 International Law Commission, Analytical Guide to the Work of the International Law Commission: Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters, at https://legal.un.org/ilc/guide/6_3.shtml; ILC Draft Articles, supra note 1.

33 Zorzi Giustiniani, supra note 11, at 17.

34 Id. at 152–64.

35 Id. at 103.

36 Id. at 204.

37 Martti Koskenniemi, From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument (rev. ed. 2006).

38 Zorzi Giustiniani, supra note 11, at 4, 175, 199, 201–02.

39 Emilie Morin, Beckett's Political Imagination (2017).

40 Matsui, supra note 11, at 255.

41 Id. at 255–56, 259.

42 Id. at 255.

43 Id. at 256.

44 Bandopadhyay, supra note 11, at 12–13.

45 Id. at 196.

46 Id. at 202–04.

47 Id. at 19.

48 Matsui, supra note 11, at 235, 256.

49 Zorzi Giustiniani, supra note 11, at 172.

50 Id. at 65, 173, 175, 180 (emphasis in original).

51 Bandopadhyay, supra note 11, at 79.

52 Luiz A. Mendes-Victor, The 1755 Lisbon Earthquake: Revisited 136–38 (2009).

53 A. Betâmio de Almeida, The 1755 Lisbon Earthquake and the Genesis of the Risk Management Concept, in The 1755 Lisbon Earthquake: Revisited 147 (2009); Susan Bassnett, Faith, Doubt, Aid and Prayer: The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 Revisited, 14 Eur. Rev. 321, 327 (2006).

54 Jan Kozák & Vladimír Čermák, The Illustrated History of Natural Disasters 131 (2010).

55 Jean-Paul Poirier, The 1755 Lisbon Disaster, The Earthquake that Shook Europe, 14 Eur. Rev. 169 (2006).

56 Charles F. Walker, Shaky Colonialism: The 1746 Earthquake-Tsunami in Lima, Peru, and Its Long Aftermath 22 (2008).

57 Id.

58 Emmerich De Vattel, The Law of Nations, Or, Principles of the Law of Nature Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns 264 (Thomas Nugent trans., 2008).

59 Walter Benjamin, The Lisbon Earthquake, in Selected Writings, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, 1931–1934, at 536–42 (Rodney Livingstone trans., 2004); Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics 361 (E. B. Ashton trans., 1973).

60 Zorzi Giustiniani, supra note 11 at 173

61 Bandopadhyay, supra note 11, at 79–106

62 Matsui, supra note 11, at 44–46, 77–84.

63 John Whittier Treat, Lisbon to Sendai, New Haven to Fukushima: Thoughts on 3/11, 100 Yale Rev. 14, 17 (2012).

64 Id. at 15.

65 Younghwan Kim, Minki Kim & Wonjoon Kim, Effect of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster on Global Public Acceptance of Nuclear Energy, 61 Energy Pol'y 822 (2013).

66 Dorothee Arlt & Jens Wolling, Fukushima Effects in Germany? Changes in Media Coverage and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power, 25 Pub. Understandings Sci. 842 (2016); Lukas Hermwille, The Role of Narratives in Socio-technical Transitions—Fukushima and the Energy Regimes of Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom, 11 Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 237 (2016).

67 UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Japan: Earthquake & Tsunami – Situation Report No. 16, at 5–6 (2011).

68 Matsui, supra note 11, at 256.

69 Hilary Charlesworth, International Law: A Discipline of Crisis, 65 Mod. L. Rev. 377 (2002).

70 Martti Koskenniemi, To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth: Legal Imagination and International Power, 1300–1870 (2021).

71 Matsui, supra note 11, at 6.

72 Id. at 92.

73 Id. at 3.

74 Bandopadhyay, supra note 11, at 124–26.

75 Id. at 202.

76 Zorzi Giustiniani, supra note 11, at 62–66.

77 Matsui, supra note 11, at 4.

78 Zorzi Giustiniani, supra note 11, at 95, 204.

79 Bandopadhyay, supra note 11, at 9.

80 Treat, supra note 63, at 18.

81 Matsui, supra note 11, at 20–26.

82 Tamaki Mihic, Japan After Fukushima, in Re-imagining Japan After Fukushima 11 (2020).

83 Richard E. Levy, International Law and the Chernobyl Accident: Reflections on an Important but Imperfect System, 36 U. Kans. L. Rev. 81, 81 (1987).

84 Id.

85 See, e.g., Aleksandra Čavoški, Revisiting the Convention on Nuclear Safety: Lessons Learned from the Fukushima Accident, 3 Asian J. Int'l L. 365–91 (2013); Harold S. Yun, Fukushima and New Zealand v. France Nuclear Tests: Can Japan Be Brought to the International Court of Justice for Damages Caused by Fukushima Plants?, 24 Minn. J. Int'l L. 387–412 (2015); Kanami Ishibashi, Further Developments in Fukushima and Other New Movements for Implementing International Human Rights Law in Japan, 21 Asian Y.B. Int'l L. 202–10 (2015).

86 ILC Draft Articles, supra note 1.

87 Id. Art. 2, Commentary para. 7. On the limited rights protection afforded individuals by the ILC Draft Articles more generally, see Bartolini, supra note 12, at 1110–11 and Kälin, supra note 12, at 45–46.

88 ILC Draft Articles, supra note 1, Art. 3(b).

89 Id. Art. 3, Commentary para. 15. On the possibility of two states concurrently qualifying as “affected” by a single disaster and the ILC Draft Articles’ inattention to their relation, see Bartolini, supra note 12, at 1114.

90 ILC Draft Articles, supra note 1, Art. 3, Commentary para. 14.

91 Zorzi Giustiniani, supra note 11, at 60–62.

92 Twining, supra note 14, at 171–72.

93 ILC Draft Articles, supra note 1, Art. 11.

94 Id. Arts. 10–17.

95 Dire Tladi, The International Law Commission's Draft Articles on the Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters: Codification, Progressive Development or Creation of Law from Thin Air?, 16 Chin. J. Int'l L. 425, 450 (2017).

96 ILC Draft Articles, supra note 1, Art. 2, Commentary para. 2; see also Art. 13(3).

97 Id. Arts. 7–8.

98 Id. Art. 9.

99 Id. Art. 9, Commentary para. 8. “[M]ore radical provisions were dismissed during the drafting process,” thereby “fail[ing] to provide a satisfactory answer to . . . the uneven distribution of [disaster] risk.” René Urueña & Maria Angelica Prada-Uribe, Disasters, Inter-State Legal Obligations, and the Risk Society: The Contribution of the ILC's Draft Articles, 1 Y.B. Int'l Disaster L. Online 70, 84–85 (2019).

100 ILC Draft Articles, supra note 1, Art. 9(2).

101 Id. Art. 9, Commentary paras. 12, 15.

102 Id. Art. 6.

103 The ILC Draft Articles’ insistence (in Article 6) that relative vulnerability be “tak[en] into account” could be read to require thoroughgoing investigation of those vulnerabilities and expansive measures of “positive discrimination” to address these; the ILC's commentary stipulates that positive discrimination should “not be taken as exclud[ed].” Id. Art. 6, Commentary para. 7. That commentary's emphasis, however, on the “neutral[ity]” of the term “vulnerable” suggests that those making claims for affirmative action under the ILC Draft Articles likely face an uphill battle. Id. Art. 6, Commentary paras. 6–7.

104 Id. Art. 6, Commentary para. 8.

105 Thérèse O'Donnell, Vulnerability and the International Law Commission's Draft Articles on the Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters, 68 Int'l Comp. L. Q. 573, 583 (2019).

106 Bandopadhyay, supra note 11, at 24.

107 ILC Draft Articles, supra note 1, Art. 6, Commentary para. 7.

108 Id.

109 Matsui, supra note 11, at 90.

110 ILC Draft Articles, supra note 1, Art. 6, Commentary para. 6.

111 See, e.g., Stacia S. Ryder, A Bridge to Challenging Environmental Inequality: Intersectionality, Environmental Justice, and Disaster Vulnerability, 34 Soc. Thought & Res. 85 (2017); Kyle Breen, Disaster Racism: Using Black Sociology, Critical Race Theory and History to Understand Racial Disparity to Disaster in the United States, 31 Disaster Prevention & Mgmt. 229 (2021); Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), General Recommendation No. 37 on the Gender-Related Dimensions of Disaster Risk Reduction in the Context of Climate Change, para. 2, UN Doc. CEDAW/C/GC/37 (Mar. 13, 2018).

112 ILC Draft Articles, supra note 1, Art. 6, Commentary para. 7.

113 Id. Art. 6, Commentary para. 7.

114 Bandopadhyay's book makes a passing claim that the vulnerability paradigm within disaster law may be “rooted in colonial practices of ‘scientifically’ identifying and subjugating dangerous spaces full of corrupt, hapless, and ungrateful people in need of saving.” Bandopadhyay, supra note 11, at 24. Meanwhile, Zorzi Giustiniani's index only affords vulnerability one mention and Matsui's book has virtually nothing to say on the matter beyond noting “the absence of concern for vulnerable minorities” in Japanese law. Matsui, supra note 11, at 73.

115 GA Res. 76/119 (Dec. 9, 2021).

116 ILC Draft Articles, supra note 1, pmbl., Commentary para. 3.

117 Id. Art. 3(a).

118 Id. Art. 3, Commentary para. 10.

119 Id. Arts. 1, 6, 10.

120 Id. Art. 9, Commentary para. 18.

121 Id.

122 Id. Art. 9, Commentary para. 5.

123 Id. Art. 7, Commentary para. 1 (quoting UN Charter, Art. 55(a)).

124 Id. Art. 3(a).

125 Palaces of Hope: the Anthropology of Global Organizations 19 (Ronald Niezen & Maria Sapignoli eds., 2017).

126 Fleur E. Johns, Global Governance: An Heretical History Play, 4 Glob. Jurist [i]–49 (2004).

127 ILC Draft Articles, supra note 1, pmbl.

128 ILA France, Anthropocene, ILA/ADI White Paper 02 (2022) 11–12, at https://www.ilaparis2023.org/en/white-paper/anthropocene.

129 Id. at 13.

130 Id. at 73.

131 Id. at 76.

132 Cf. O'Donnell, supra note 105, at 607 (describing the ILC Draft Articles as “ask[ing] very little of non-disaster-prone states”); Tladi, supra note 95, at 451 (concluding that the ILC Draft Articles are “likely to have no impact whatsoever on disaster relief practice”).

133 Bandopadhyay, supra note 11, at 194.

134 Cf. Fleur Johns, Guantánamo Bay and the Annihilation of the Exception, 16 Eur. J. Int'l L. 613 (2005).

135 ILC Draft Articles, supra note 1, Art. 9(1).

136 IPCC Press Release, The Evidence Is Clear: The Time for Action Is Now. We Can Halve Emissions By 2030. (Apr. 4, 2022), at https://www.ipcc.ch/2022/04/04/ipcc-ar6-wgiii-pressrelease.

137 Zorzi Giustiniani, supra note 11, at 204.

138 International Law Commission, Analytical Guide to the Work of the International Law Commission: Sea-Level Rise in Relation to International Law, at https://legal.un.org/ilc/summaries/8_9.shtml.

139 Statute of the International Law Commission, Adopted by the General Assembly in Resolution 174 (II) of 21 November 1947, Art. 1 (1947).

140 Constitution of the International Law Association, as amended at the 77th Conference of the ILA/ADI, Johannesburg, Art. 3(1) (2016).

141 J. Crawford, The International Law Association from 1873 to the Present, 2 Rev. Droit Unif. 68, 68 (1997).

142 Eduardo Valencia-Ospina, Seventy Years of the International Law Commission: Drawing a (Sustainable) Balance for the Future, 48 Envtl. Pol'y L. 181, 181 (2018).

143 Zorzi Giustiniani, supra note 11, at 199.

144 ILC Draft Articles, supra note 1, Art. 2.

145 Matsui, supra note 11, at 6.

146 ILC Draft Articles, supra note 1, Arts. 2–3.

147 Bandopadhyay, supra note 11, at 12; see also Zorzi Giustiniani, supra note 11, at 49 (“care for victims is not the only objective of the stricken State, which is equally and legitimately concerned with protecting its sovereignty . . . against internal and external threats”).

148 Zorzi Giustiniani, supra note 11, at 7.

149 ILA France, supra note 128, at 76.

150 Id. at 70.