This series of three seminars is organised by Chad Damro (SPS), Elizabeth Bomberg (SPS) and Navraj Singh Ghaleigh (Law) at the University of Edinburgh throughout 2009. The seminar series has been made possible by the generous financial support of the Europa Institute.

13 November 2009

Climate change litigation, and its academic literature, has to date focused on the means by which extant legal tools can deliver environmental justice, however defined. In various fora various legal instruments have been deployed to address the climate change problematic. Whether at the sub-, supra-, or national level, there has been an anxious search for causes of action to hold governments and other social actors to account for not adequately addressing their 'climate change responsibilities'. To this narrative may be added an emerging category of legal challenges whereby the complex regulatory structures constituting, surrounding and supporting legal responses to climate change are finding themselves subjected to scrutiny in courts and tribunals. The litigation before the European Court of Justice concerning the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme - overwhelming the world's largest carbon market - is emblematic of such attempts to limit regulation. In such cases, litigation may be thought of as subversive to, rather than supportive of, the ambitions of UNFCCC and its progeny. As mechanisms to address climate change emerge in myriad polities, such litigation assumes ever greater importance.

The purpose of this seminar is to examine such issues and develop a set of tools with which the patterns of climate change litigation can be understood. Such inquiries might include, but need not be limited to the:
- evolving categorisations of claims that are finding their ways into courts and tribunals;
- relationship between national and supra- and international law
- claims of judicial globalisation;
- dialogical character of the litigation process;
- roles that litigation serves, and its efficacy as a regulatory tool.

Programme

Participants:

Dr Abbe Brown, Edinburgh Law School, University of Edinburgh Long Abstract
Professor Hari Osofsky, Assoc. Professor, Washington & Lee School of Law, USA Draft Paper
Ms Kate Miles, Law School, University of Sydney, Australia Draft Paper
Dr Ole Pedersen, Law School, University of Newcastle, UK Draft Paper
Professor David Scholsberg, Northern Arizona University, USA Draft Paper
Mr Anatole Boute, Groningen Centre of Energy Law, The Netherlands Draft Paper
Ms Jolene Lin, Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong Draft Paper
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh, Edinburgh Law School, University of Edinburgh Presentation

The seminar will be a closed session, with the speakers (a small group of scholars and practitioners) joined by a number of invited experts. Papers will be distributed in advance.
Background Paper

Public Lecture:

 Date:  1 May 2009

This seminar will explore the unique multi-level dynamics of climate change mitigation and adaptation.  Addressing climate change requires sustained interaction and cooperation between levels of governance (local/national/supranational). But it also raises thorny constitutional issues in terms of legal competence and responsibility. This seminar will explore this dynamic in comparative transatlantic perspective. It will bring together experts and practitioners on environmental intergovernmental relations in the EU and US, with particular emphasis on the role of US states, German Länder,  and the Scotland-UK-EU dynamic.  

Our speakers/presenters include:
Dr. Elizabeth Bomberg, ‘Climate Change and Inter-Governmental Relations in Transatlantic Perspective: Key Themes’ Slides
Miranda Schreurs (Free University Berlin) ‘Top Down, Bottom Up, and Horizontal Linkages in Climate Change Policy Making: Transatlantic Perspectives’ Slides
Wilfried Swenden, Nicola McEwen & Elizabeth Bomberg (UoE) ‘Intergovernmental politics and climate change:  Scotland, UK, EU’ Paper Slides
Duncan McLaren, Friends of the Earth Scotland
Philip Wright, Deputy Director, and Head of Climate Change Division Scottish Government
Prof. Barry Rabe, Brookings Institution and University of Michigan 

Workshop Summary

Contact: Elizabeth Bomberg (e.bomberg@ed.ac.uk)

This seminar is supported by UACES. 

The EU needs to consider seriously the possibility of a change in US climate change policy following the US presidential election of November 2008. Ongoing international negotiations over a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol provide the opportunity for a possible transatlantic compromise on climate change. This seminar will bring together scholars to explore the prospects of transatlantic climate change cooperation under a new US administration and a possible post-Kyoto agreement.
 

Date: 13 March 2009

Our speakers/presenters include:
Dr. Elizabeth Bomberg, Senior Lecturer, University of Edinburgh. Bomberg Paper
Dr. Chad Damro, Senior Lecturer, University of Edinburgh. Damro Paper
Dr. Sebastian Oberthür, Scientific Director, Institute for European Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Oberthür Paper
Professor John Vogler, University of Keele.
Dr. Anthony Zito, Reader in Politics, University of Newcastle. Zito Paper

PUBLIC LECTURE:

Dr Anthony Zito:

'Environmental Agencies as Agents of Multi-level Governance and Learning'.
David Hume Tower, Faculty Room North, 13 March, 2-4pm