This groundbreaking book collects contributions from many of the world's leading climate and energy law scholars and provides the first major study of national Climate Change Acts. This cutting-edge type of legislation originated with the first Climate Change Act framework which was passed in the United Kingdom in 2008, and is intended to enable the law to grapple effectively with one of the great problems of our times, anthropogenic climate change.
Since 2008, national framework climate legislation has been slowly but steadily emerging in countries across the world. This trailblazing collection employs a comparative analytical legal methodology and offers the first comprehensive study of this new, innovative form of legislative regime.
In addition to containing broad internationalist chapters, deep-dive national case study chapters are included that focus on individual countries and provide analytical depth. A final chapter draws together the threads of the book's foregoing contributions to deduce generalisable conceptual insights based on current knowledge and experience. Uniquely, the book provides a conceptual model for Climate Change Acts that can usefully inform the development of national framework climate legislation in all countries.
Thomas L Muinzer undertook his qualifying law degree and other legal qualifications at Queen's University Belfast. After receiving his Doctorate in 2015 he taught in the Law School and the Planning Department at Queen's University, then was appointed Lecturer in Law at Stirling University, Scotland, where he was Co-Director of the Law School's major dual-stream LLM/MSc Masters programme (2016-2018). He was subsequently Lecturer in Energy Law at 'CEPMLP', the University of Dundee's Centre for Petroleum, Mineral Law and Policy (2018-2020). In 2020 he joined the Law School at the University of Aberdeen as Reader in Energy Transition Law. He is the Co-Director of the Aberdeen University Centre for Energy Law.
Peter D Cameron is Chair of Energy and Climate Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London, UK. He is a barrister (England & Wales), and regularly sits as an arbitrator and expert. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Pieter Bekker holds the Chair in International Law at the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy at the University of Dundee and a Partner and Head of Investment Arbitration at CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP. He is Founding Director of the Dundee Ocean and Lake Frontiers Institute and Neutrals (DOLFIN) for research on law and science in determining maritime boundaries. Professor Bekker previously taught as a Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School. He obtained basic and doctoral law degrees in Dutch and International Law from Leiden University and a Masters degree from Harvard Law School. A national of the Netherlands, he served as a staff lawyer in the Registry of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). He is an active member of the New York Bar and has served as counsel and advocate in cases before the ICJ, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and arbitral tribunals charged with adjudicating investor-State disputes. Pieter is the author/editor of four books and over 100 articles on international law.
Volker Roeben is Professor of International Law and Dean at Durham Law School, UK.
Leonie Reins is Professor of Public Law and Sustainability at the Erasmus Law School, Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Prior to that she was an Assistant Professor at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society ('TILT') at Tilburg University. Leonie obtained her PhD from KU Leuven, Belgium, where she also worked as a Post-Doc. The monograph based on her dissertation is entitled Regulating Shale Gas – The Challenge of Coherent Environmental and Energy Regulation (2017). Leonie obtained private sector experience whilst working for a Brussels-based environmental law consultancy, providing legal and policy services for public-sector clients such as the European Commission and the European Parliament.
Leonie's research focuses on the intersections of energy and environmental law. She is particularly interested in the regulation of new technologies that are capable of mitigating, or providing means of adaptation to, global problems such as climate change and the associated risks and uncertainty that manifest themselves at the local level. Leonie regularly speaks at international conferences and her works have been published in journals such as Energy Research & Social Science, Environmental Liability and Oil, Gas, Energy Law Intelligence (OGEL).
