From Litigation to Implementation: Framing Climate Remedies in European Human Rights Law

Başak Çalı is Professor of International Law at the University of Oxford and head of research at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights . Her expertise concerns international law and human rights. She has published widely in the fields of authority of international law, standards of review in international law, European human rights law, UN human rights law and comparative international human rights law and human rights remedies. She is a co-founder of European Implementation Network, Europe’s leading civil society organisation that advocates for the implementation of human rights judgments. She is a co-investigator of ‘Frames: Framing Reality and Normativity in European Human Rights Law: Climate Change, Migration, and Authoritarianism (Volkswagen Foundation 2023-2025).

Prof. Dr. iur. Helen Keller, LL.M, is a professor of law at the University of Zurich. She was judge at the European Court of Human Rights form 2011 until 2020. She has written about friendly settlements before the ECtHR. From 2008 to 2011, Helen Keller was a member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee. She has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Fribourg in 2018 for her contribution to cross-fertilisation of doctrine and practice. In 2024, Helen Keller was honoured three times. In June, she received a nomination as part of the "75 Women in 75 Years of Council of Europe History" project, in October the University of Geneva awarded her the title of Dr honouris causa and in November she received the Robert Kennedy Prize. Since December 2020, she has served as a judge at the Constitutional Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Louise leads Greenpeace’s climate justice and liability strategies. Louise has a keen interest in movement lawyering, corporate accountability and human rights. Prior to joining Greenpeace International, Louise interned at the UNFCCC Legal Affairs and worked in land claims, ancestral and treaty rights and environmental litigation for Indigenous Peoples of northern Quebec, Canada. Louise is on the advisory panel of the Disability-Inclusive Climate Action Research Program. Louise is an attorney registered in the New York Bar and holds a LLM degree in international environmental law and climate change law from the University of Edinburgh and a BCL and LLB from McGill University.

Marcelo is a DPhil candidate in Law at the University of Oxford, affiliated to St. Antony's College. His research focuses on climate change in constitutional adjudication. It aims to offer a comparative analysis of the legal questions raised by climate change and the way it challenges traditional understandings of constitutional doctrines of adjudication. His main Research interests include comparative constitutional law, climate change law, and public law more generally. He has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters in edited collections in both English and Spain.

Joana Setzer is an Associate Professorial Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her research focuses on climate litigation and global environmental governance. Since 2013, she has been involved in the Climate Change Laws of the World project—the most comprehensive global database on climate policy and legislation—and has led the initiative since 2020. Joana regularly advises governments, international organizations, and NGOs, providing expert insights on climate law and policy. Her work plays a key role in shaping the global understanding of how legal frameworks can drive climate action, highlighting both opportunities and challenges in holding governments and corporations accountable.

Michaela Krömer is an Austrian attorney specializing in strategic climate litigation. She has represented numerous clients, including children challenging Austria’s inadequate Climate Protection Law on constitutional grounds, farmers opposing soil sealing, and most prominently, Mr. Müllner in Müllner v. Austria before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). This case, granted priority status, is considered a potential landmark decision. As the founder of CLAW—an initiative for climate justice—Krömer is dedicated to leveraging the law for climate protection. Beyond her legal work, she serves on the University Council of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna (BOKU), is a member of the regulatory commission of E-Control, and holds a position on the supervisory board of the Austrian Broadcasting Company (ORF).

Marta Torre-Schaub is a research director at the CNRS, Senior Professor of environmental law and climate change. She teaches climate change law and litigation at the University of Paris 1 and at Sciences Po Paris. She is attached to the ISJPS (Institut des Sciences Juridiques et Philosophiques de la Sorbonne) of the University Paris 1-Sorbonne. She leads the interdisciplinary network CLIMALEX on law and climate change and the environmental axis of the ISJPS. She is a former expert with the National Agency for Food Safety, Environment and Work on Plant Protection Products and Risks (ANSES). She also leads the Environmental Law and Environmental Justice working group within the framework of the "Legal Strategies" programme of the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs. Presently she is member of the Board of the Scientific Council of the Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales of the CNRS and she leads The Environmental Justice Hub Project at University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Thom Wetzer is Associate Professor of Law and Finance at the University of Oxford and the Founding Director of the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme. His research explores how to align private initiative and the public good. Specifically, he studies how legal and financial mechanisms address, or fail to address, governance challenges generated by the presence of externalities, with a particular emphasis on climate change and financial stability. Wetzer’s work combines traditional legal scholarship with multidisciplinary analysis and has been published in legal, economic, and scientific journals (including Science, Nature, and Nature Climate Change). He is also a co-editor of the Handbook of Financial Stress Testing (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Wetzer actively collaborates with and advises governments, central banks, international institutions, corporations, and NGOs – including the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the United Nations, and law firm De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek. He is currently serving as a member of the United Nations Task Force on Net Zero Policy and the European Securities and Markets Authority's Working Group on Sustainable Finance. At Oxford, Wetzer also co-leads the Net Zero Regulation and Policy Hub, acts as a Co-Investigator of the Oxford Net Zero Initiative, and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Lavanya Rajamani is a Professor of International Environmental Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, and Yamani Fellow in Public International Law at St Peter's College, Oxford. Lavanya specializes in the field of international environmental and climate change law. She has authored and led several books and articles in this field, including the second edition of the Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law (OUP, 2021), Innovation and Experimentation in the International Climate Change Regime (Hague Academy/ Receuil des Cours, 2020), and the ASIL prize-winning co-authored book, International Climate Change Law (OUP, 2017). She served as Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, is a member of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, and has also served as a consultant and legal advisor, among others, to the UNFCCC Secretariat and Alliance of Small Island States. She was part of the UNFCCC core drafting and advisory team for the 2015 Paris Agreement. Lavanya is also involved in differing capacities, including in providing the evidence base, in current and prospective climate cases before national and international courts, as well as counsel to States.

Dr Rupert Stuart-Smith is a Senior Research Associate in Climate Science and the Law at the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme. Rupert’s research sheds light on the impacts of climate change and 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'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 Perú, and the implications of burgeoning climate litigation on climate-related financial risk. 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.

Chris Hilson is Professor of Law and Director of the Centre for Climate and Justice at the University of Reading. He has published widely in the area of EU and ECHR environmental rights as well as on climate law (including a number of 2024 blog posts on the KlimaSeniorinnen and Milieudefensie v Shell cases in Verfassungsblog and EJIL:Talk!). He has a particular interest in the use of targets across both environmental and climate law. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Environmental Law (OUP) from 2008-2012 and has acted as an adviser on environmental law to NGOs including ClientEarth and Friends of the Earth Scotland.

Ekaterina is an academic and a lawyer specialising in the field of business and human rights. Her work focuses on strategic human rights and environmental litigation. She examines how conventional private law doctrines evolve in response to global challenges and are used creatively in different jurisdictions to foster human rights and environmental accountability. Ekaterina is the author of ‘Tort Litigation against Transnational Corporations: The Challenge of Jurisdiction in English Courts’ (OUP 2024), a revised manuscript of a PhD thesis completed at the University of Cambridge. She is also a co-editor of ‘Civil Remedies and Human Rights in Flux’ (Hart Publishing 2022) and ‘Civil Liability for Human Rights Violations: A Handbook for Practitioners’ (Bonavero Institute of Human Rights 2022).

Floris Tan is senior legal associate with the Climate Litigation Network, where he supports national organisations bringing framework climate cases against their governments. He specialises in human rights law, and the implementation of human rights arguments in climate litigation. He holds a PhD in international law and human rights law from Leiden University, the Netherlands. He previously worked at the International Law Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, on issues including human rights and the environment, and climate litigation before the European Court of Human Rights and the International Court of Justice.

Building on the landmark case brought by the Urgenda Foundation against the Dutch Government, April works with CLN to support national organisations bringing framework climate cases against their governments. She specializes in issues relating to science and evidence in climate litigation cases. April previously worked in the Climate Programme at ClientEarth. She also worked on environmental issues and major infrastructure planning at the law firms DLA Piper and White & Case LLP. April has completed a BSc in Ecology and Environmental Biology and an MSc in Environmental Policy at Imperial College. She has also completed a Graduate Diploma in Law and an MSc in Law, Business and Management at the University of Law.

Malcolm Langford is a Professor of Public Law, University of Oslo. A lawyer and social scientist, his publications span human rights, international law, constitutional law, and emergent technologies, and he has won several prizes for his work on international investment arbitration and legal education. He previously chaired the ISDS Academic Forum for the UNCITRAL reform process, founded a centre of excellence for legal education, and co-directed the Centre on Law and Social Transformation, University of Bergen. He is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook on Economic and Social Rights and has been an advisor to many UN bodies, governments, and civil society organizations. His current book project is Judging Complex Cases, which examines how courts can draw on systems theory to navigate challenging topics like social rights, climate change, and artificial intelligence.