This article discusses the reorientation of environmental protection in Amazonia away from the paradigm of individual and collective natural resource management of regional or global commons, to the more radical thesis of Integral Ecology as the vindication of human dignity, environmental ¹ 1 The initial version of this paper was first presented at the Ford Program for Human Development and Solidarity Research Seminar Series, Kellogg Institute of International Studies, University of Notre Dame, 28 February 2020. The final version benefited from the comments of the International Journal of Human Rights’ initial peer reviewer, as well as from our Notre Dame colleagues Father Robert Dowd, Paolo Carozza, Ambassador Susan Page, Clemens Sedmak, Patrizio Piraino, Sandra Polania-Reyes, and Father Emmanuel Katongole. We are particularly grateful to Father Dan Groody for several discussions on his work in the Catholic Church’s humanitarian work in Amazonia, as well to the Convocate database for comparative research resources on international human rights and Catholic social teaching. All errors are ours. stewardship and collective responsibility – a concept deeply related to the Church’s own pioneering of Integral Human Development as the ‘authentic development of every person and of the whole person’. ² 2 Populorum Progressio, Encyclical of Pope Paul VI on the Development of Peoples, 26 March 1967, para. 14, at http://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum.html (accessed October 23, 2020). Under the concept of Integral Ecology, we argue that this expressive elaboration of the Catholic Church’s core social teaching of Integral Human Development ultimately hearkens more closely to the broad definition of the Right to Development in the Draft UN Convention on the Right to Development, which recognises development ‘that is consistent with, and based on, all other human rights and fundamental freedoms’. ³ 3 Article 4(1) of the Draft Convention on the Right to Development, A/HRC/WG.2/21/2, 17 January 2020, full text at https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Development/Session21/3_A_HRC_WG.2_21_2_AdvanceEditedVersion.pdf (accessed October 23, 2020). As seen in the Final Document of the Amazon Synod, ⁴ 4 See Final Document, The Amazon: New Paths for the Church and for an Integral Ecology, full text at http://www.synod.va/content/sinodoamazonico/en/documents/final-document-of-the-amazon-synod.pdf (accessed October 23, 2020). Integral Ecology does not put forward an anthropocentric vision of environmental protection that seeks mainly to balance human extractive and consumption needs with environmental preservation objectives, but rather reinforces the shared identity of the Earth and its inhabitants, and our collective human responsibility to care for ‘our common home’. ⁵ 5 Laudato Si, Encyclical of Pope Francis on Care for Our Common Home, 24 May 2015, at http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html (accessed October 23, 2020). Nowhere is this unique relationship and interconnectedness of the Right to Development, Integral Human Development, and Integral Ecology more vividly illustrated than in the interdependence of the peoples and the natural environment of the Amazon.

International law has always had a dual significance to the Philippine constitutional system. On the one hand, the frequent articulation of international law principles within modern Philippine constitutional norms, statutes, and administrative rules demonstrate an outward-looking normative ethos – one I have described in other scholarship to be consistent with the 1987 Philippine Constitution’s ‘universalist history’. On the other hand, the considerable volume of Philippine jurisprudence applying international law norms to date overwhelmingly illustrate how Philippine litigants have strategically deployed international law (most especially international human rights law) over the years, as an acceptable external legal basis to hold Philippine government leaders to account under the vastly expanded judicial review doctrine in the 1987 Philippine Constitution. This active individual and group resort to adjudication and legislation could explain why international law has flourished under the postcolonial and post-dictatorship 1987 Philippine Constitution. This comprehensive jurisprudential, statutory, and constitutional analysis aims to show how, and to what degree, Philippine legal culture and history reflect a continuing deep engagement with international law, in ways that are certainly unique to the Philippines’ evolving political ideologies, colonial and postcolonial history, treatment, and implementation of international treaties within the Philippine constitutional system. Most importantly, the absence of explicit methodology for the breadth of constitutional interpretation of the Incorporation Clause under the 1987 Philippine Constitution warrants normative rethinking, so as not to uniformly open the floodgates to hard international law sources (eg treaties, customs, general principles) as well as softer international instruments lacking the requisite State consent to the binding quality of such sources within the Philippine legal system. To this end, I make three proposals on how the Philippine Supreme Court could define an explicit methodology for use and interpretation of the Incorporation Clause, transparently refer to other foreign and international sources, and openly reassess its ideological bases for recognition of international law in the Philippine constitutional system, as part of the Court’s distinct judicial function.

On February 3, 2021, the International Court of Justice delivered its judgment on preliminary objections in Alleged Violations of the 1955 Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights (Islamic Republic of Iran v. United States of America). The judgment rejected all of the United States’ preliminary objections, declared the admissibility of Iran's Application, and held that the Court has jurisdiction “on the basis of Article XXI, paragraph 2 of the Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights of 1955.”

There is nothing like normalized crises1 on multiple fronts in international human rights law – from the Russian aggression and invasion of Ukraine; to the existential threats of climate change and...