Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Freiburg im Breisgau, 2004/2005.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2007. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 205-211)

In the past few decades, accountability has become a key concept to assess the role and place of a wide range of trasnational institutions. Such trend can be partially explained by the widespread sense of unaccountability that permeates the legal realm beyond the state. The aim of this thesis is to investigate three particular institutional actors of the Climate Change Regime: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Compliance Committee of the Kyoto Protocol (CCKP), and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). This investigation is carried out through the descriptive and critical lenses of accountability. It resorts to the Global Administrative Law (GAL) project in order to pursue that task. Along the way, the thesis asks four interrelated research questions. The first is conceptual: what is accountability? The second is an abstract normative question: what is regarded as a desirable accountability relationship at the national and the global level? The third is purely descriptive: how accountable are the three institutions? The fourth, finally, is a contextualised normative question: how appropriate are their three accountability arrangements? The two former questions are instrumental and ancillary to the two latter. That is to say, they respectively provide the analytical and evaluative frameworks on the basis of which a concrete description and a concrete normative assessment will be done.

This thesis offers a new conceptual framework - the environmental rule of law - to describe weaknesses in the development of Indian environmental law, and uses this description to critique the dominant discourse on environmental institutional reform. A secondary framework-fragmentation is also used to supplement the analysis of Indian environmental law. Part I develops the conceptual framework of the environmental rule of law by considering the special challenges that the inherent polycentric and interdisciplinary nature of environmental law present for commonly understood rule of law values such as clarity, certainty and consistency. It also relies on Jeremy Waldron's conception of articulated governance to demonstrate that the rule of law is linked to the principle of separation of powers. This conception lays emphasis on the role of the three institutions of government - the legislature, the executive and the judiciary - in strengthening or weakening the rule of law. To determine institutional contribution to the rule of law, I develop three broad indicators to assess the legal quality of the instruments of each of these institutions of government. These indicators are: a) capacity of statutes to guide executive and judicial behaviour by goal-setting and balancing competing interests; b) the ability of the executive to make flexible yet reasoned decisions grounded in primary legislation; and c) the use of statutory interpretation and consistent standards of judicial review by the courts as they give effect to environmental rights and principles. Through the use of case studies in Part II that span environmental impact assessment, forest conservation, and indigenous rights, I demonstrate that the lack of adherence to these indicators produces a body of environmental law that is fragmented i.e. one characterised by multiple overlapping yet self-contained legal regimes with conflicting provisions and the absence of unifying norms. In Part III, I use this understanding of fragmentation to critically analyse environmental legal and institutional reform proposals. I show that existing proposals address only the structure, rather than the process of functioning of the institutions of government. The rule of law framework that I develop also has potential for application to other areas of the law.

La fraude, est une notion qui fait partie intégrante des mœurs de notre société. Elle se rattache à la nature humaine. Tout le monde s'accorde à la reconnaître comme un phénomène universel et perpétuel. Dans la pratique, on la retrouve dans toutes les branches du droit. Cependant, on ne relève aucune étude sur la fraude en droit administratif. Ainsi, notre thèse se propose d'appréhender ce phénomène à travers l'acte administratif obtenu par fraude. Apparu tardivement dans la jurisprudence administrative, la présente étude s'est d'abord consacrée à préciser ses contours en la distinguant et la délimitant des notions voisines. L'identification de ses différentes manifestations et l'intention du fraudeur sont mises en lumière. L'étude de son régime juridique s'est ensuite imposé. Un principe de sanction systématique qui permet à l'administration de révoquer l'acte administratif entaché de fraude de manière perpétuelle a été mis en place. La nature de l'acte obtenu par fraude s'est ainsi précisée / Fraud is a concept that is an integral part of the standards of our society. It is a notion that is related to human nature. Everyone agrees to recognize it as a universal and perpetual phenomenon. In practice, it is found in all branches of law. However, there is no conception of the fraud theory which is specific to the administrative law. Then, our study proposes to apprehend this phenomenon through the administrative act obtained by fraud. As We noticed the notion of fraud appeared late in administrative jurisprudence, the present study was first devoted to clarify its outlines by distinguishing and delimiting other neighboring concepts. A systematic sanctioning principle that allows the administration to revoke the perpetually fraudulent administrative act has been introduced. The nature of the act obtained by fraud has thus been specified

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Originally presented as the author's Thesis (DEA--Université de Paris II) in 1998.

Originally presented as the author's Thesis (DEA--Université de Paris II) in 1998.