Architectures of intergenerational justice: Human dignity, international law, and duties to future generations

Abstract

This article draws attention to the constitutive requirements of intergenerational justice and exposes the limitations of regulative arguments based on international human rights law. Intergenerational justice demands constraining the regulative freedom of the international community, and it is tempting to assume that adequate constraints are already contained within existing treaties including international human rights treaties. In fact, intergenerational justice demands bespoke constitutional norms at the international level, and it demands entrenching constitutional norms. International human rights law per se implies neither of these constitutive propositions and both are problematic in light of the present structure of international law. Nevertheless, a combination of arguments concerning intergenerational justice and the systemic implications of human dignity yield a more constitutive account of human rights and therefore an internal critique of the overall architecture of international law.

Intergenerational Justice Today

“…Certain institutions and practical proposals aimed at defending the interests and rights of non‐present generations are already in play, and this includes the increasing tendency to upgrade such rights to the status of constitutional rights or even to consider them part of international human rights law (Riley, ). In addition, the temporal distance between some generations increases uncertainty as to the effects of present actions or to the nature of future generations' available resources; the temporal direction of causation may generate problems of asymmetry of power across time; the lack of temporal coexistence with remote generations is insufficient to remove the interests that present persons may have in the interests of future persons.…”

Law, Practical Reason, and Future Generations

“…This is partly because we are dealing with problems produced by collective agency, but partly because of the agentic continuity achieved by constitutionalism. Constitutions entail the continuity and the stability of identity of certain agentsstates and nations -into the future in a way that is denied to individual humans (see also Riley 2016). As such, the connection of intergenerational justice and legal justice may be confounded by the types of problems of practical reason addressed in the following scenarios.…”

Environmental sustainability is not worth pursuing unless it is achieved for ethical reasons

“…Combining Tables 3 and 4 in Supplementary Appendix I, under the assumption that ethical rules have no intrinsic values (i.e., ethical rules are instrumental to achieve environmental sustainability), leads to the conclusion that environmental ethics should refer to ethical principles behind the strong sustainability paradigm (based on the intrinsic value of future generations), the eco-centric framework (based on the intrinsic value of nature) or the ethical precepts behind the main religions. Indeed, rights of future generations or non-humans (i.e., limits to interests or actions of current generation to enforce interests or actions of future generations or non-humans) cannot be tightly supported by laws, although somebody complains and restoration is possible (Riley, 2016). In other words, exclude last columns on rights in Tables 3 and 4.…”