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10 J. Prop. Plan. & Envtl. L. 2 (2018)

handle is hein.journals/jppel10 and id is 1 raw text is: 







Editorial


Journal of Property, Planning and
Environmental Law
Vol.10 No.1,2018
pp. 2-4
©Emrald Publishing Limited
2514-9407
DOI 1&1OSJQPPEL-02-2018-0008


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
environmental law scholarship can only come of age when scholars face the methodological
challenges of environmental law research head on [Fisher et al. (2009)]. They argue that
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
amendments   to the Nuclear Installations Act, 1965 made by an Order of 2016[1]. The
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

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