To compete and thrive in the 21st century, democracies, and the United States in particular, must develop new national security and economic strategies that address the geopolitics of information. In the 20th century, market capitalist democracies geared infrastructure, energy, trade, and even social policy to protect and advance that era’s key source of power—manufacturing. In this century, democracies must better account for information geopolitics across all dimensions of domestic policy and national strategy.
Although in September 2019 the Tokyo District Court cleared three former TEPCO executives of criminal charges, the legal fallout from the Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear accident is colossal. With over 85 billion dollars of damages awarded to 2.9 million claimants (as of 18 October), it marks the largest liability case in global legal history. In addition to a tsunami of suits brought by evacuees and affected companies in civil courts, hundreds of administrative injunctions were sought against other reactors across Japan. Transnationally, arbitrators from Tokyo to New York hear cases ranging from multi-million dollar trade disputes over cancelled uranium contracts to a pending 5.1 billion dollar investment arbitration over profits lost due to the German nuclear phaseout.
In contrast to the fundamental regulatory reforms and ambitious procedural solutions adopted in Japan, legislative changes have been limited elsewhere and the adoption of new, binding and enforceable international nuclear law remains strikingly absent. Across jurisdictions and areas of nuclear law, and based on the collaboration of 19 international experts, this talk examines what legal lessons from Fukushima have been learned, providing an overview of Julius Weitzdörfer’s forthcoming book Fukushima and the Law (Cambridge University Press, co-edited with Kristian Lauta).
Julius Weitzdörfer
Julius Weitzdörfer is a Stanton Nuclear Security Junior Faculty Fellow with an expertise in the law and governance of extreme technological risk, particularly regarding unprecedented disasters, and nuclear-, environmental- and disaster law in Japan. He holds a Dr iur from Hamburg University, an LLB from Bucerius Law School, and an M.A. from the University of Cambridge, where he spent six years, teaching EU trade law, environmental law, and conservation governance. His current research explores lessons from the Fukushima accident for the recovery from potential acts of nuclear and radiological terrorism.
