Law and sustainability: perspectives for Lithuania and beyond

• Bartolacelli, Alessio, redaktorius [edt]
• Sagatienė, Dovilė, redaktorius [edt]

ENThe first part of this book focuses on national and international public law as the legal areas that allow the conditions for sustainable development to be established. The first chapter (“Sustainable development and artificial intelligence: Is AI4ESG a key driver to reach the objectives of UN Agenda 2030?”) deals with the regulation of AI with specific reference to sustainability, advocating for a more reliable legal framework for AI with a view to achieving the UN Agenda 2030 SDGs. The author specifically argues that the EU plays a major role in setting proper rules, and large companies might also help in mitigating risks linked to new technologies by involving themselves and their stakeholders in sustainability initiatives. The second chapter (“The concept of sustainability in national Constitutions: Insights from constitutional jurisprudence”) comparatively analyses many European national constitutions to consider the strong relationship between many of them and sustainability. This is intended to consider both environmental sustainability and people’s rights, assessing the long-term stability of constitutions but generally perceiving the absence of a comprehensive pattern within the topic. The author then moves to the constitutional doctrine of the Lithuanian Constitutional Court regarding sustainability, which helps to understand the constitution as a social (and therefore intergenerational) contract. In the third chapter (“The efficiency of green public procurement regulation in Lithuania as an element of achieving objectives of sustainable development”), the author describes the requirements present in Lithuanian law regarding the qualification of a public procurement as a green public procurement in detail. They also point out that the current rules allow a more accessible possibility for correcting mistakes present in tenders if the conditions laid down in the procurement are met.The fourth chapter (“Sustainable development and international investment law: A look at the new generation of international investment agreements”) addresses the issue of sustainability from the perspective of international investment law. After describing the chronological development of the trend in international investment agreements, the author highlights the fact that States currently include references to sustainable development in IIAs, introducing social and environmental elements in an essentially neo-liberalist framework. Nevertheless, the author also notes that only very few of the most recent IIAs include features of sustainability, and that in many cases these features exist solely within models. On this basis, the author advocates for a shift of paradigm by strengthening the idea of investor accountability beyond soft law. The fifth chapter (“Privacy-friendly personal data processing and sustainability: Is there mutual support?”) points out how the massive processing of big data related to SDG-linked issues might be in contrast with people’s right to privacy. The author discusses the different principles involved in this trade-off – with a specific focus on the principle of purpose limitation and the possibility that its application damages the environment in the long run – and advocates for further investigation in the field in the coming years. The sixth chapter (“Sustainable work over the course of life. A new paradigm for decent work”) considers the topic of social sustainability, with specific reference to the issue of decent work. The authors highlight the fact that the notion of decent work is extremely vague, and advocate for a more comprehensive principle of sustainable work that should serve as the foundation for the promotion, protection, and enforcement of work and working conditions – with protection offered to workers, notwithstanding their specific employment status.They propose the use of hard-law measures for the enforcement of sustainable work and to enhance employees’ participation in the workplace management, thus making the voices of workers more audible. The second part is devoted to sustainability and private law. The first chapter (“The legal consequences of apparent authority for sustainable agency relationships”) deals with a classic issue of private law with a view to its interaction with sustainability: apparent authority. The author argues that the application of sustainability to a transaction marked by apparent authority should lead to the right of the affected third party to freely choose the remedy between the compensation of damages and the performance of the obligation in kind. The same should also be the case for the principal and the fourth parties involved in the agency relationship. The second chapter (“The change of commercial contractual relations influenced by sustainability clauses”) describes the impact of sustainability on commercial contractual relations, in particular with the inclusion of sustainability clauses. The author analyses the interaction between sustainability clauses and the doctrine of classic contract law, finding difficulties in applying to the former the legal instruments proper to the latter. However, sustainability-related contractual obligations are usually ancillary, and, in general, sustainability objectives are not yet considered trade custom or established business practice – even if the current trend leaves open the idea that they will become increasingly relevant in the near future. [...]. [From the publication]