Book Launch: Towards the Environmental Minimum

Sidney Sussex College and CELS are pleased to invite you to the launch of Dr Stefan Theil’s monograph Towards the Environmental Minimum (Cambridge University Press, 2021). The launch will bring together academics from a wide variety of legal backgrounds to discuss the argument and themes of the book.

About the book: The book explores the implications of environmental degradation and pollution for domestic and international human rights protection regimes. Serious environmental pollution presents a fundamental challenge to any commitments to human rights because their meaningful enjoyment ultimately presupposes basic environmental guarantees. This is true regardless of whether one assigns an instrumental (economical) or an intrinsic (moral) value to the natural environment: it is clear that the current levels of pollution and degradation cannot continue without jeopardising the long-term survival of humankind. The core objective of the book is to address the gap between human rights commitments to a healthy environment and the doctrinal reality and limitations of existing protection regimes. The book rejects the fashionable critique that environmental harm requires a radical departure from established legal categories and principles. Instead, the environmental minimum provides a normatively attractive and practically viable framework that allows courts to address environmental harm in a principled and consistent manner on the basis of domestic constitutions and international protection regimes (regardless of whether they specifically protect the environment). The book draws on a unique and comprehensive dataset of the environmental case law of the ECHR and other regional and international protection regimes that is freely available for research and educational purposes here.

About the author: Stefan Theil is the John Thornley Fellow in Law at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge. He completed his first degree in law at the University of Bayreuth (2011). After brief stints working for a commercial law firm and for the Research Services of the German Bundestag, Stefan earned an LL.M. from University College London (2013). Inspired to pursue a career in academia, he completed his doctoral work at the University of Cambridge (2018) and was the inaugural Research Fellow in Civil and Political Rights at Bonavero Institute, University of Oxford (2017-2021). Stefan’s research interests are broadly in human rights, public and constitutional law. You can follow Stefan on twitter and discover his papers on ResearchGate.

Chair & Discussants

Professor Kenneth Armstrong was elected to the Professorship of European law in September 2013. He is a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College and from September 2021 he is Vice-Master of the College. Before joining the Faculty, Kenneth was Professor of EU law at Queen Mary, University of London. He is Chair and syndicate member of the Academic Publishing Committee of Cambridge University Press. Kenneth has written extensively in the field of European Union law and policy, with a particular focus on the evolving governance and institutional structures of the EU. His book Governing Social Inclusion: Europeanization through Policy Coordination was published by Oxford University Press in 2010 and won the 2011 UACES Best Book Prize. His book Brexit Time: Leaving the EU - Why, How and When? was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. In 2020 he was appointed as an advisor to the Finance and Constitution Committee of the Scottish Parliament where his advice focused on the UK Internal Market. Kenneth was awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to analyse the dynamics of regulatory alignment and divergence after Brexit. The project runs from 2018-22.

Dr Nick Friedman holds a BComm in economics, an LLB, and an LLM from the University of Cape Town, and a BCL, MPhil, and DPhil from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Nick’s research is concerned with the application of public law principles to corporate regulation. His work cuts across legal and moral philosophy, constitutional law, human rights, and corporate law. He now teaches Constitutional Law and Administrative Law, but previously taught Human Rights, Jurisprudence, and Roman Law at Oxford, and a range of economics courses at the University of Cape Town.

Professor Alison Young is the Sir David Williams Professor of Public Law at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Robinson College. She currently co-edits the UKCLA blog on constitutional law, and is a member of the Editorial Board of European Public Law, and of Public Law. She is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a trustee of The Constitution Society. Alison researches all aspects of public law, both of the UK and the EU. Her main interest is in constitutional theory, particularly dialogue theory, where she draws comparisons between different means of protecting human rights. She is also interested in comparative public law, specifically drawing comparisons between UK law, EU law, the law in other commonwealth countries and France. Alison has published widely in all of these areas, and is the author of Parliamentary Sovereignty and the Human Rights Act (Hart Publishing, 2009). She was the recipient of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2015. The Fellowship enabled her to write a book on dialogue theory, Democratic Dialogue and the Constitution (OUP, 2017), which was a runner up for the main Inner Temple Book Prize, 2018.

Please register our Eventbrite site: Towards the Environmental Minimum - Book Launch

Tickets for this event are limited - advance booking is required.