Vol. 1 No. 40 (2026): Revista Jurídica Portucalense (Law and Sustainability)
The Thematic Dossier Law and Sustainability grew out of the XVIII Conference of Public Law Professors, held in September 2025 at Universidade Portucalense. Though an independent publication with its own double-blind peer review, the dossier owes its existence to that meeting, opening with papers first presented there before widening to independent submissions.
Sustainability is easy to proclaim as a constitutional value and much harder to build into workable legal instruments — water management, maritime governance, tax incentives, investment arbitration. That gap is what this dossier explores, moving across constitutional theory, the law of the sea, EU regulation, climate governance, and fiscal policy. Contributors tackle questions such as the EU's constitutional duty toward sustainable development, water scarcity in the Algarve, autonomous ships and canal governance, forced labour in fisheries, the proportionality of corporate due-diligence rules, climate leadership among Latin American middle powers, investment arbitration in climate disputes, and green and tourist taxation.
The thread running through all of it: sustainability isn't a settled rule but a standard that only takes real shape when applied — in a directive, a tax benefit, an arbitral procedure. Get that application wrong, and what looks like protection can quietly become its opposite.
