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This article analyses the normative powers conferred on and exercised by 69 Investigative Mechanisms, including UN Commissions of Inquiry, Fact-Finding Missions and Independent Investigative Mechanisms established between 1963 and 2020. Relying on a dataset collected by the author including all their mandates (78) and reports (121), the article introduces an analytical framework and uses it to (i) identify the specific normative powers conferred on Investigative Mechanisms, (ii) the evolution and main step changes in these powers between 1963 and 2020, and (iii) their specific expression in actual practice in matters such as the use of terminology (violations/abuses of human rights by non-State actors), the determination of the standard of proof, the characterization of primary norms, the development of integrated accountability strategies, and the internalization of functions usually entrusted to prosecutorial mechanisms.

This chapter highlights how, despite the large number of environmental agreements at all levels, the role of customary international law remains key in practice. First, many treaties in force remain largely unimplemented. Secondly, treaties only bind those states parties to them, and that introduces sometimes important variations in the scope of environmental agreements. Thirdly, there is at present no treaty formulating binding overarching principles interweaving sectorial environmental agreements. As a result, it is often necessary to revert to customary norms when difficulties of interpretation or implementation arise. Fourthly, custom is important to mediate between a range of environmental and non-environmental interests governed by different treaties. Finally, custom plays an important role in disputes concerning a disputed area or where there is no applicable treaty. The chapter then analyses the process of custom formation with reference to environmental norms in order to show both the ‘banality’ and the peculiarities of this process. It also looks at the content of customary international environmental law as recognized in the case law.

In human rights practice, references to ‘dignity’ are as pervasive as they are difficult to pin down. ‘Dignity’ is used widely and often contradictorily. It underlies the privileged legal treatment afforded to states as a result of their sovereignty, but also the claims to strip states and state officials of the manifestations of such sovereignty, such as immunities. It also grounds the overriding character of human rights and social development, while at the same time adding legitimacy to the fight against ‘anthropocentrism’ and for the protection of nature for its own sake. From ‘sovereignty’, to ‘human dignity’, to ‘eco-centrism’, the concept of dignity underlies the normative claims of three competing circles. In this review essay, I rely on the distinction between these three circles of dignity to organize the survey and discussion of an extensive body of work that has helped to clarify the contours of the concept of ‘dignity’. The essay aims to empower practitioners not only to avoid the abuse of this concept but also the dilution that may result from casual and unconsidered reference to it. More fundamentally, it explores two conceptual battlefronts opened by the concept of human dignity. These battlefronts are interdependent because the very assertion of human dignity to protect the individual against the powers of the state may also lay the foundations for an over-exploitation of nature.

International law and international relations have experienced the phenomenon on the judicialization of international relations and the subsequent proliferation of international courts and tribunals. One of the most significant aspects of this phenomenon, is the diversity in the institutional settings of each of the international courts and tribunals. These differences in the mandate, jurisdictional and institutional design make each of these judicial institutions unique. Despite these differences, there is one aspect that is common to nearly all the existing international courts and tribunals: the right for judges and arbitrators to append dissenting opinions. Differences exists, however, as to how this right is regulated, designed and exercised across international courts and tribunals. While at some courts and tribunals dissenting opinions should be anonymous, at others their content should be strictly limited to the aspects addressed in the majority judgment. Likewise, judges do not always exercise their right to append dissenting opinions for the same reasons.Based on these differences, the dissertation sets out to investigate whether there are differences in the exercise of the right to append dissenting opinions that can be traced back to differences in the mandate, jurisdictional and institutional design of the international court or tribunal in which they were rendered. This research aim is made through a focus on two courts that are notable for their differences, namely, the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.