ABSTRACT
The Academy of Science and the Academy of Medicine called on the government ‘to avoid including the precautionary principle (PP) in a constitutional text because of the potential catastrophic consequences for scientific development, technological innovation, public health, economic welfare and even environmental protection’. In the context of environmental law the PP needs to be understood as a component of the overarching concept of sustainable development. Judicial restraint in Norway meanwhile appears to be due to the fact that the PP is hardly evident in environmental policy areas and H. C. Bugge questions whether it will continue to evolve from an optional into a compulsory principle. The critics of the PP definitely have something else in mind: when applying the term unscientific they seek to convey the message that the PP is in essence irrational in the sense that it does not allow logical arguments or sound judgements to be made.
