On 26 September 2022, Dr Franziska Arnold-Dwyer and Dr Katrien Morbee organized a roundtable on ‘Soft Law, Hard Law, Crime? How to push the climate change agenda’, sponsored by the Society of Legal Scholars.
The winner of the ‘Lawyers and Sustainability’ essay competition receiving their prize.
The panellists included Anna Kirkpatrick, Senior Associate in the Litigation, Dispute Resolution & Risk Management team at Clifford Chance LLP, Professor David Whyte, Director of the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, and Jonathan White, Climate Programme Lawyer at ClientEarth. The panel was chaired by Dr. Costanza Russo. They discussed the regulatory strategies needed to tackle the climate crisis. There were 83 registered participants ranging from practitioners to academics and students, with both a legal and non-legal background.
At the event, the winners of the Queen Mary National Student Competition ‘Lawyers and Sustainability’ – which aims to encourage law students to reflect on the role lawyers play in tackling the climate crisis – were announced. The student submitting the winning essay as well as the runner-up were awarded a ‘Sustainability Award’.
The rich discussion and newly formed connections during the roundtable have inspired new avenues for research and collaboration. The winning student essay will be published on the website of Queen Mary University of London.