Interpreting Environmental Offences ─ The Need for Certainty

This book analyzes the interpretation of environmental offenses contained in the protection regimes of waste, contaminated land, and habitats. It concludes that the current purposive approach to interpretation has produced an unacceptable degree of uncertainty. Such uncertainty threatens compliance with rule of law values, inhibits predictability, and therefore produces a scenario which is unacceptable to the wider legal and business community. The book proposes that a primarily linguistic approach to interpretation of the relevant rules should be adopted. In so doing, it analyzes the appropriate judicial role in an area of high levels of scientific and administrative complexity. It provides a framework for interpretation of these offenses. The key elements that ought to be included in this framework - the language of the provision, the harm tackled as drafted, regulatory context, explanatory notes, and preamble and purpose in a broader sense - are considered. Through this framework, a solution to the certainty problem is provided. The book will be of interest to academics and practitioners within the field of environmental law. [Subject: Environmental Law, Natural Resources Law, Energy Law]

Emma Lees is a University Lecturer in Property and Environmental Law in the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge.