Elizabeth C. Fisher (University of Oxford Faculty of Law) has posted Opening Pandora's Box: Contextualising the Precautionary Principle in the European Union (Ellen Vos, Michelle Everson and Joanne Scott (eds), Uncertain Risks Regulated: National, EU and International Regulatory Models Compared (UCL Press, Cavendish Publishing, Series: Law, Science and Society, forthcoming)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper is an exploration of some of the different issues that arise in thinking about the precautionary principle in the European Union. In the first and second sections it is shown that the precautionary principle is a legal principle that relates to the external and internal exercise of state power and while commonly raising issues of administrative constitutionalism it does so differently in different legal cultures. In the third and fourth sections it is shown that there are at least six different legal contexts that the precautionary principle applies to in the EU context but that the European Commission's Communication on the precautionary principle has encouraged a uniform interpretation of the principle. In the final section this state of affairs is assessed.
