Few issue areas exemplify the centrifugal forces that have prompted the emergence of global law scholarship better than the environment. With its propensity to blur or transcend conventional distinctions between national and international, public and private, and formal and informal, environmental governance offers a consummate case study to test the promise and perils of global law. In this article we situate global environmental law in the broader debate about lawmaking and application beyond the nation state, tracing the evolution and elusive boundaries of this nascent field. Our survey allows us to identify conceptual ambiguities and missed opportunities in the literature on global environmental law, including challenges to its normativity and legitimacy. From there, however, we proceed to outline a twofold opportunity for the global environmental law project: (i) an opportunity to enrich environmental law with more diverse and inclusive practices; and (ii) an opportunity for collaborative self-reflexivity by the scholars and practitioners of environmental law as these not only interpret and apply but, through their work, actively shape the content of the law.

中文翻译：

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全球环境法：背景与理论、挑战与承诺

很少有问题领域比环境更能说明促使全球法学出现的离心力。由于倾向于模糊或超越国家与国际、公共与私人、正式与非正式之间的传统区别，环境治理提供了一个完美的案例研究来检验全球法律的前景和危险。在本文中，我们将全球环境法置于关于超越民族国家的立法和应用的更广泛辩论中，追踪这一新兴领域的演变和难以捉摸的界限。我们的调查使我们能够识别全球环境法文献中的概念模糊性和错失的机会，包括对其规范性和合法性的挑战。然而，从那里，我们继续概述全球环境法项目的双重机会：（i）通过更多样化和包容性实践丰富环境法的机会；(ii) 环境法的学者和从业者有机会进行协作的自我反思，因为他们不仅解释和应用，而且通过他们的工作，积极塑造法律的内容。