Abstract

The Trail Smelter Arbitration (United States/Canada) would undoubtedly be characterised as a landmark case, particularly if the principal criterion for such status is subsequent repetition leading to widespread and
near-universal endorsement. As a pivotal — and indeed foundational — moment in the development of international environmental law, Trail Smelter (as it is invariably reduced to in metonymic form to represent cumulatively the facts, the judgment and, most prominently, the international legal principle enunciated therein) has received significant attention, if not something approaching legal veneration. No discussion of the history, formulation or gradual hardening of this particular area of international law would be complete without citation, usually positive, of this
particular case. But as this chapter discovers, there is so much more to this case.