Equality and equal treatment are the principal purpose of WTO law. However, that purpose is accomplished in varying conditions, which make it difficult to regularly attain the consistency and coherence that an egalitarian and obligatory conception of the law assumes. Consequently, this chapter proceeds to demonstrate how WTO law is focused secondarily on fairness and corrective justice and how this focus begets a subordinate emphasis in law on rights, which in turn gives rise to a contractual structure that is retrospectively oriented and reasoned inductively. It also demonstrates how various features of WTO law like the non-violation cause of action and implementation are consistent with such a rights-based ethos.

This chapter examines the judicial interpretation of a broadly stated constitutional test of fairness in the property rights context, the factors that influence outcomes, and the extent and effects of unpredictability. That analysis goes to the heart of the mediation of property rights and social justice thorugh constitutional property rights adjudication, by considering what is involved in an 'unjust attack' on property rights. The overall picture that emerges is of judicial deference to the decisions of the elected branches of government. Where judges have doubts about the fairness of interferences with property rights by the State, such doubts are often smuggled into decisions under the cover of 'non-property' principles like retrospectivity, fair procedures, and rationality, rather than through direct judicial engagement with the tension between property rights and social justice. The question of fair burdening emerges as the core area of contestation in constitutional property law, with the most uncertainty and unpredictability emerging from judicial decision-making on that issue.

This chapter considers the role of human rights law in attributing responsibility for harm associated with the impacts of climate change. The suitability of human rights law to address harm caused by climate change depends upon whether a victim can substantiate a claim that a duty bearer has contributed to climate change, in such a way as to amount to a human rights violation. Qualifying the effects of climate change as human rights violations, however, poses technical obstacles concerning causality, retrospectivity, apportionment, as well as the provision of an adequate remedy. Yet, these obstacles are not insurmountable. As scientific knowledge improves, tracing causal connections between particular emissions and resulting harms is becoming less difficult. This chapter looks at the Carbon Majors petition, which is currently under investigation by the Human Rights Commission of the Philippines, to critically appraise the role of human rights law in solving complex questions associated with responsibility for the impacts of climate change.