Intergenerational Equity and Rights and International Criminal Law

Abstract

This chapter introduces the concepts of intergenerational equity and rights in international law and examines the extent to which they are legally protected through current international criminal law. Although thoughts of the obligations owed by the present generation to the future have occupied philosophers at least since Kant in 1785, it is generally considered that John Rawls’s 1971 work, A Theory of Justice, provided the first systematic study of the question. Following this, questions of justice for future generations began to take on international prominence at the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. During the 1980s, other philosophers such as Brian Barry, Derek Parfit..