Judges and lawyers have become crucial actors in the protection of climate. Think of the Dutch cases of Urgenda v. the Dutch government and Milieudefensie v. Shell which have become milestones on the path to establish climate protection as a legal right and obligation. Finally, international courts are increasingly inclined to recognise a clean and safe environment as a human right. But critics question if courts are the right place to discuss profoundly political issues. Is the legal route simply short-circuit the democratic process? Should judges and lawyers be in charge of problems that need to be addressed by parliaments and the public? In conversation with renowned German law professor Martin Heger and Katharina Bachmann.
About the speakers
Martin Heger holds the Chair of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure, European Criminal Law and Modern Legal History at the Faculty of Law at Humboldt University in Berlin. He habilitated on the subject of “The Europeanization of German environmental criminal law” at the University of Tübingen. He is an expert on the Europeanization of criminal law and criminal procedural law with a particular focus on economic and environmental criminal law as well as the development of law in Europe since modern times.
Katharina Bachmann is a researcher at Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands), where she is carrying out analysis for Milieudefensie’s climate court case against Shell. Since 2019, Katharina has been working with different organisations and initiatives to accelerate climate action on different societal levels. Katharina graduated in climate policy from Wageningen University in 2021 and has since been working with German and Dutch NGOs to hold large polluters accountable. At Milieudefensie, Katharina specialises in oil and gas value chains and energy transition towards net zero.
Peter van Dam (moderator) is professor of Dutch history at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on the history of civic initiative and activism as well as the history of historiography. His current research revolves around the question how people have tried to make the world more sustainable: Which problems did they identify? And how have they translated their hopes and fears into initiatives to shape their societies?
