Extreme Wrong Committed by National and Supranational Inactivity: Analyzing the Mediterranean Migrant Crisis and Climate Change from a Legal Philosophical Perspective

The maritime distress of refugees on the high seas and anthropogenic climate change represent two significant humanitarian and political challenges of our time. Referring to the Radbruch formula, this paper examines the question of whether state and supranational failure to act on these two complex problems can be classified as extreme injustice from a legal ethical perspective, and what minimum ethical requirements this would imply for states and communities of states. This paper argues that corresponding analyses and discourses could provide a valuable and differentiated normative orientation – not only for migrant and climate protection politics, but also for law makers and public discourse.