OTHER INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS Common Concern of Humanity by Dinah

* Manatt/Aht Professor of International Law, George Washington University Law School, USA. This paper was presented as part of the Alexandre Kiss Memorial Conference in Budapest (EPL Vol. 39, No.1, p. 50) under the sponsorship of CEDE. Alexandre Kiss believed deeply in the interdependence of all persons and humanity’s dependence on nature and its processes. In his lifetime, and partly through his work, he saw these beliefs spread and environmental protection emerge as a fundamental value of society. He concluded that, like other fundamental values in a society, environmental protection must be recognised as a common concern, and ensured through law, especially superior norms of constitutional or international law. While he was sceptical of the concept of jus cogens as it has been expanded by writers,1 he accepted the need for recog nition of fundamental substantive rules to protect the global environment in the common interest. This paper explores briefly the origin, recognition and legal consequences of the notion of a “common concern of humanity”.