The Legally Disruptive Nature of Climate Change and the Role of Universities
Dr Rupert Stuart-Smith, University of Oxford
Dr Melanie Murcott, University of Cape Town
Wandile Brian Zondo, Natural Justice
Notes & Changes
This will be a Hybrid event (speakers will be in-person and online, the audience can also join online). The event will be followed by a wine reception.
For online attendance, please register here.
Climate change presents a pressing challenge not just to environmental governance but to the very structure of legal systems worldwide. It is legally disruptive - forcing lawyers, legal scholars, and courts to reconcile novel climate-related issues with existing legal frameworks. This disruption has led to new legal regimes, an increasing number of climate-related disputes and a rethinking of fundamental legal concepts.
This panel will explore how universities, as key knowledge hubs, should respond to this disruption. How should climate change be integrated into legal education? How can interdisciplinary collaborations between law, science, and civil society shape legal knowledge? What role do universities play in closing the expertise capacity gap and ensuring legal systems evolve to meet the challenges of climate change? The discussion will bring together legal scholars and practitioners to reflect on these issues from a comparative and global perspective, offering insights into how legal education and research can drive meaningful change.
This event is convened in collaboration with the University of Cape Town and Oxford Sustainable Law Programme.
This event is held in association with the Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit, as part of the Oxford Local Programme of events themed around climate change, human rights, and climate justice.
Chair: Dr Ekaterina Aristova, Bonavero Institute of Human Rights
Speakers:
Professor Liz Fisher, University of Oxford
Dr Rupert Stuart-Smith, University of Oxford
Dr Melanie Murcott, University of Cape Town
Wandile Brian Zondo, Natural Justice
Professor Liz Fisher is Professor of Environmental Law at the Faculty of Law Corpus Christi College. Her research explores the mental constructs lawyers and legal scholars use to legally reason, particularly in relation public administration and environmental problems. Her work is grounded in national common law jurisdictions. Elizabeth Fisher and Sidney Shapiro, Administrative Competence: Reimagining Administrative Law (CUP 2020) was jointly awarded the American Bar Association Administrative Law Section's Scholarship Award 2021. Her 2007 book, Risk Regulation and Administrative Constitutionalism, won the SLS Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship 2008. Other publications include Environmental Law: A Very Short Introduction (OUP 2017) and Fisher, Lange and Scotford, Environmental Law: Text, Cases and Materials (2nd ed, OUP 2019). Fisher is an Overseas Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law. She has won teaching awards, and served as Vice Dean of the Law Faculty 2013-6, HT 2019, and TT 2021 (the last being Vice Dean (Personnel)). She was awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for 2022-25 for a project exploring legal imagination and environmental law.
Dr Rupert Stuart-Smith is a Senior Research Associate in Climate Science and the Law at the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme. In his research, Rupert advances methods in attribution science to shed new light on the impacts of climate change on health, glaciers, and extreme weather events. He studies how climate science can be leveraged to enhance legal scrutiny of corporate and state climate action and accountability for the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. Rupert also publishes on the implications of burgeoning climate litigation on climate-related financial risk.
Rupert's recent publications include research on legal scrutiny of states’ dependence on CO2 removal to meet climate targets, the impact of climate change on glacial retreat in Peru in the context of an ongoing lawsuit (Lliuya v RWE) and the evidence needed to bring successful legal claims on the impacts of climate change. His research has been published in leading scientific journals including Science, Nature Geoscience and Nature Climate Change. Rupert regularly provides scientific advice and training for lawyers and judges, and has authored expert reports for climate lawsuits. Rupert holds a DPhil and BA(Hons) in Geography from the University of Oxford.
Dr Melanie Murcott is an activist academic and legal practitioner. She is a director of Lawtons Africa, a South African Law firm, and is involved in the leadership of three notable South African NPOs: the Centre for Environmental Rights, Animal Law Reform South Africa, and the Environmental Law Association of South Africa. She carries out her academic work as an Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town where she conducts interdisciplinary research on climate change law and governance issues, fostering human rights-based responses.
Wandile Brian Zondo is a young South African legal scholar and researcher. He is a Researcher at Natural Justice (Southern Africa Hub) and a PhD Candidate in Public Law (University of Cape Town (UCT)). He is an Oppenheimer Memorial Trust (OMT) Scholarship recipient and holds an LLM in Environmental Law (UCT) and an LLB (University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN)).