Editorial
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPPEL-02-2018-0008 |
| Published date | 09 April 2018 |
| Date | 09 April 2018 |
| Pages | 2-4 |
| Author | Julie Adshead,Emma Lees,Francis Sheridan King |
| Subject Matter | Property management & built environment,Building & construction,Building & construction law,Real estate & property,Property law |
Editorial
I am delighted to be writing this editorial at such an exciting time in the history of this
journal. This tenth volume sees a relaunch under a new title, which reflects our new aims
and scope. The Journal brings together scholarship from the interrelated areas of
property, planning and environment and will continue to accommodate diverse
methodological approaches. We remain international in scope and retain a commitment
to comparative legal research. These three areas of law are, of course, not new to the
Journal and much has been published in these fields over the years, both under the
editorship of Dr Paul Chynoweth and more recently myself. We have had Associate
Editors for Environmental Law and Property Law for quite a number of years and I
continue to lead on Environmental Law along with Dr Francis Sheridan King on Property
Law. We have recently been joined by Dr Emma Lees as Associate Editor for Planning
Law and we welcome her to the Team. We also welcome new members to our Editorial
Advisory Board and we are extremely pleased to be publishing papers from board
members (old and new) in this launch issue with more contributions from our board to be
published in a follow-up issue later this year.
Professor Elizabeth Fisher et al. in a thought-provoking article of 2009 suggested that
“environmentallaw scholarship can only come of age when scholarsface the methodological
challenges of environmental law research head on”[Fisher et al. (2009)]. They argue t hat
the development of the subject, along with its worth as an intellectual discipline, is
hampered by a lack of explicit and widespread discussion about methodology. The
same can, no doubt, be said for the discrete area of planning law. It is fitting, therefore,
to have a paper on methodology as the first under our new title. Associate Editor,
Dr Emma Lees, and her co-author, Dr Edward Shepherd, present their “manifesto”
aimed at stimulating debate on the methodologies used in environmental and planning
law. In highly politicised areas such as these, the interpretation of legal norms can vary
and the authors argue that ideology can “shape and mould judicial decision-making”.
Lees and Shepherd look at the “rule of law”as an ideology that is internal to legal
practice. Following Freeden (1998), they identify the “rule of law”as a contested legal
concept comprising other specific legal concepts, themselves contested. The authors
conclude that this understanding of an ideology that, although a feature of legal culture
can be considered separately, can help in the analysis of judgments in areas of high
levels of administrative discretion such as planning and environmental law.
The second paper in this launch issue is co-authored by Professor Robert Lee and
Dr Radek Stech. This contribution addresses an important area of environmental law –
compensation for harm caused by nuclear installations. The harm resulting from a
nuclear disaster can be of enormous proportions as we see from the projected costs of the
Fukushima disaster, currently at around $188bn. The authors consider some important
focus of the paper is on changes introduced by the 2016 Order to the type of damage for
which the compensation can be claimed and the relationship between this and damage as
conceived by the common law in England and Wales as well as in the EU law. Lee and
Stech conclude that using the EU Environmental Liability Directive as a reference point
for the extension of compensation for environmental impairment and its consequences in
the 1965 Act may mean that the new categories of nuclear liabilities will be open to doubt.
The authors also bemoan the missed opportunity to clarify the existing law on personal
JPPEL
10,1
2
Journalof Property, Planning and
EnvironmentalLaw
Vol.10 No. 1, 2018
pp. 2-4
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2514-9407
DOI 10.1108/JPPEL-02-2018-0008
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