This policy brief examines a critical aspect of quality education litigation: the tools available to courts to fashion and ensure implementation of a constitutional method of funding public education to improve schools. 

Whether socio-economic rights should be entrenched in constitutions has been a subject of lively debate. On the one hand, it has been argued that such an entrenchment is necessary in order to recognize the worth and standing of those rights and in order to give individual claimants sufficient remedies in cases of a breach of a right. On the other hand, it has been argued that it is unnecessary (because statutory recognition is sufficient) and even harmful because it invites judges to enter into the field of social policy where they have neither competence nor legitimacy to act.

The 11 September 2001 al-Qaeda terrorist attack on the United States produced not only human and material loss; it also resulted in an apparent loss of the nation's traditional adherence to the rule of law. Sensing the physical and emotional fear of the American public, as well as the political timidity of Congress, the Administration seized upon the aftermath of 9/11 to foster its concept of the ‘Unitary Executive’: a sweeping expansion of presidential authority.

This policy brief charts the slow boadening of access to environmental justice in England and Wales over the past few decades, and examines current and future prospects with reference to the Aarhus Convention and the implications of potential reforms to the 'loser pays' fees system for legal action taken by environmental NGOs and civil society organizations.