This chapter discusses an oft-cited source of the All-Affected Principle in a procedural maxim of Roman private law known by the tag quod omnes tangit (‘what touches all’), a maxim that became a more expansive principle of medieval canon and civil law. By exploring some of the maxim’s original contexts and formulations, the chapter draws out several important lessons for the All-Affected Principle itself: the interplay between procedural and substantive claims; the empowerment of some to advance such claims on behalf of others; and the need for procedural closure. It then explores the possible application of this approach in the context of how climate change touches all and how claims might be made on the basis of the All-Affected Principle accordingly. Identification of moral rights to a fair per capita share of a global carbon budget, and rights against the unjust imposition of harm or the risk of harm, are both considered as potential sources of such claims. A range of possible institutional arrangements to advance and realize such claims, such as trusteeship, are briefly considered in conclusion.

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, almost all Pacific Islands and their people were firmly under colonial rule and therefore in no position to dictate the terms of regional organization. This was left to the founders of the first substantive regional organization, the South Pacific Commission, established in 1947 by Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the US, France and the Netherlands. The founders did, however, anticipate the involvement of Island people through the South Pacific Conference. This chapter focuses largely on the period of ‘colonial regionalism’ while also considering the wider context of post-war decolonization and the Cold War. Another important development in terms of defining the regional border with Southeast Asia came with the annexation of Netherlands New Guinea by Indonesia. Now known officially as the provinces of Papua and West Papua, they remain part of Indonesia, although self-determination issues are by no means settled.

The familiar description of fiduciary law erases European and US imperialism. There is no discussion of the ways in which fiduciary law framed imperial struggles over political and economic power. There is no mention of the roles that fiduciary law played in various European empires and the US Empire between the late fifteenth century, when imperial expansion began, and the time of rapid decolonization in the 1960s. This chapter is a summary of a political economy of fiduciary law and imperialism that I hope to develop at length and in detail. My argument is that the familiar description of the economic structure of fiduciary law is incomplete. So too is the autonomy-enhancing account of fiduciary law. Fiduciary law, I want to argue, may enhance exploitation to facilitate market exchange. It provided an ideological justification for imperial expansion in the interests of opening up trade between peoples. Fiduciary law, moreover, played institutional roles in the financing, administration, and oversight of imperial exploitation and the facilitation of trade among those who benefitted from it.

When the League of Nations was dissolved in 1946, the question arose of the status of the Palestine Mandate. Egypt, as a member of the League, argued that the Palestine Mandate became defunct. Britain, and other members of the League, said that it would continue. Britain deemed it to be in force until its withdrawal from Palestine in 1948. Britain did not conclude with the United Nations a trusteeship for Palestine, as Britain did with other territories that it had placed under the mandate system of the covenant of the League of Nations.

Chapter 5 traces the final shift in Nauru’s status from trust territory to sovereign state in 1968. The dissolution of C Mandate status and the expanded trusteeship system placed Australia and South Africa out of step with global decolonisation movements. Their attempts to maintain control over Nauru and South West Africa attracted international criticism. The chapter examines the relationship between the South West Africa Cases and the UN’s embrace of Nauruan independence. Over the 1960s, the Trusteeship Council brokered independence negotiations between Australia and the Nauru Local Government Council. Australia gradually ceded political control and phosphate ownership but refused liability for the island’s rehabilitation. Nauru’s transition from trust territory to state was a profound achievement, but international recognition of Nauruan sovereignty was deeply ironic. The Republic was regarded less as a viable state than as a vehicle through which the Nauruan people could decide for themselves how to respond to the island’s environmental devastation. The chapter concludes that the 1968 Constitution marked a further accretion of an imperial form of established in the 1880s.

Some interpersonal interactions involve substantial trust, while others do not. The interaction between an infirm, elderly parent who needs personal care or management of assets and an adult child who undertakes to provide it is an example of a relationship that typically involves substantial trust. Some other interactions, however, even long-term interactions or those between repeat players, can require much less trust because the terms of the arrangement are specific and entail strong verification protocols. This chapter focuses on the trust, in the precise legal sense of that term, and the relationship between the trustee of the trust and the trust’s beneficiaries and settlor. To what extent does trusteeship in the legal sense require trust in the general sense? The chapter examines the features of the express trust under modern U.S. law and practice that would seem to require there to be a significant degree of trust in the trustee by the trust’s beneficiaries and/or settlor. The paper also examines the features of modern U.S. trust law and practice that attempt to protect the trust’s settlor and/or beneficiaries so that they need not place worryingly high levels of trust in the trustee.