CYIL vol. 11 (2020)

CYIL 11 (2020)

JADERNÉ PRÁVO A PRÁVNÍ FUTURISMUS

Jakub Handrlica Jaderné právo a právní futurismus Praha: Auditorium, 2019, 256 pp., ISBN 978-80-87284-76-6 [Nuclear law and legal futurism]

What will be the future of law? Legal academics have dealt with this issue over the last decade, developing a peculiar branch of scholarship described as legal futurism (or legal futurology). According to existing scholarship, the profound study of long-term tendencies in law are necessary, but not enough for predicting the future design and content of law. Additional aspects must be considered. First, the long-term policies and strategies developed by States must be taken into account. Second, when analyzing the future legal framework of technological branches, existing prospects of their future development must be considered. Only reflection upon these aspects will lead to both a reasonable and reliable prediction of future legal framework. The reviewed book – which represents the final result of a scientific project, supported by the Czech Science Agency from 2017 until 2019 - aims to link the scholarship of legal futurism with that of nuclear law. The author follows up on his earlier monograph, entitled “Nuclear Law: Legal Framework for Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy and Ionizing Radiation”, published by the same publishing house in 2012. While his earlier study was more descriptive, the recently published book uses an analytical approach and aims to apply the results presented by foreign scholarship of legal futurism vis-á-vis the law, established by the States in the area of peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The first chapter of the reviewed book opens the discussion by presenting nuclear law as an autonomous field of law. After terminological clarification (pp. 29 et seqq .), the author analyses the principles of nuclear law and their reflection in various sources of law (international agreements, municipal law, soft law etc.). In this respect, the author argues, that similar to space law, environmental law, IT law etc., nuclear law represents a new area of law, which emerged as result of the technical and societal developments in the course of the 20 th century (pp. 50 et seqq. ). The autonomous character of nuclear law is being justified by the existence of a robust structure of legal principles, which are – in their complexity – unique for the field of nuclear law (pp. 55 et seqq. ). The arguments presented in this chapter are further supported by referring to the works of other legal scholars – in particular, Vanda Lamm. Jean Marie Poitier, and Anatoly I. Grishenko). The author also contributes to the more recent discussion (Adrien Bradbrook, Terence Daintith), addressing energy law as an autonomous academic discussion. Jakub Handrlica argues that nuclear law belongs to the wider family of energy law, while having certain specifics – i.e. high degree of internalisation by the multilateral instruments, adopted under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The second chapter aims to address the tendencies, existing in the development of nuclear law over a long-term period. Here, the author presents analysis of the tendency to universalism and regionalism (pp. 67 et seqq .), tendency to establishment of rules by hard law and by soft law (pp. 80 et seqq. ), and lastly reactive and preventive tendencies in nuclear law (pp. 95 et seqq. ). Also, the author here identifies some specific features, which appears

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