Sustainable Development Law: Essence, Subject and Methodology

Any paradigmatic social shifts are accompanied with changes in the law. The trend towards sustainable development in a sense replaces the trend towards globalization, turning today into a solo social agenda. The law should not develop in a post-factum logic, but work ahead of the curve, especially if we want to achieve country leadership.

Sustainable development law, being a superstructure over a society that is being rebuilt in the spirit of sustainable development, becomes a supernova concept, an interdisciplinary, supra-sectoral regulatory array that undermines the foundations of legal architecture and taxonomy.

Sustainable development law is not reducible to environmental, climate, international law; it incorporates the principles and individual institutions of civil, investment, financial, banking, labor, corporate, private international law and other branches. It is compound and complex and requires the formation of a new multi-recognition core. The role of lawyers is to normalize the ongoing processes and build an up-to-date architecture of law, taking into account state and public strategic interests. This requires the formation of a sustainable development law doctrine, the development of regulatory models in the field of transition to a green and low-carbon economy and energy, alternative energy sources, climate security, «green» financing and investment, in the field of business sustainability, the implementation of social policy and new management patterns.

The paper analyzes the subject of sustainable development law, attempts to formulate the concept of sustainable development law, and searches for a methodology. The scientific search for a theoretical foundation for the law of sustainable development leads to the assumption that it is possible to study the latter through the prism of the scientific concept of the legal understanding of the American jurist Scott Shapiro, built around the legal theory of planning.

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