Seminar with Professor Margaret Young: The Evolving Climate Jurisprudence under UNCLOS

This seminar will consider the evolving climate jurisprudence under UNCLOS with reference to the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which gave ‘great weight’ to the advisory opinion of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). It will show that both opinions have profound consequences for the obligations of states with respect to climate change, including through application and interpretation of UNCLOS, as applied within the corpus of public international law. The seminar will address how the advisory nature of the opinions, though not strictly binding, affect all States – parties and non parties to prominent treaties such as the Paris Agreement and UNCLOS. It will also discuss the relationship between UNCLOS, the Paris Agreement and other rules and principles, including customary international law. In the context of the systemic integration of law achieved by the tribunals, the seminar will reflect on the parameters of the judicial function of international courts and tribunals, and contextualise the subsequent response of the United Nations General Assembly.

The lecture will be followed by a Q&A.

Professor Dr Margaret A. Young is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow, Director of the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH) at Melbourne Law School, and Director of Studies of the International Law Association (Australian branch). She specialises in public international law, the law of the sea, international trade law, climate change and environmental law. Her current research focuses on ‘The Blue Economy and International Law’. Before joining the University of Melbourne, she was the inaugural Research Fellow in Public International Law at Pembroke College and the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge.