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C-EENRG

Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance
 

Biography

Dr Emily Webster is Assistant Professor in Environmental Law (fixed term) at the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge. She is a member of the Hughes Hall Centre for Climate Engagement, senior research Fellow at the Transnational Law Institute, King’s College London, a member of the Centre for Climate Change Law and Governance, King’s College London, a Research Fellow for the Earth System Governance research project and a member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law. Emily teaches International, EU and domestic environmental law, tort law and company law. She has been invited to give guest lectures concerning company law and climate change, oceans and climate change, environmental justice and tort law at Birkbeck University, the Centre for Transnational Legal Studies, the University of Arizona and UCL respectively.  She has presented widely at academic conferences and workshops.

Emily has worked as a researcher with both the Climate Disclosure Standards Board and the Global Legal Action Network. She is the Managing Editor for Transnational Legal Theory and co-convenor of the journal’s special issue on Transnational Environmental Law and the Anthropocene. Emily was an ESRC funded doctoral candidate at King’s College London. She holds an LL.M in transnational law (King’s College London) and an LL.B, both with distinction.

Research

Transnational environmental law; EU and domestic environmental law; climate-energy nexus; environmental and climate justice; climate litigation and adjudication; companies and climate change; climate change law and governance; energy transition law; sustainable development

Emily’s research evaluates the regulation of commercial activity in response to environmental problems. She adopts a theoretical framework drawing on existing literature in Earth System Science, Earth System Law and Ecological Law to evaluate environmental law and regulation that impacts upon corporate activity. For instance, she considers the use of property for commercial purposes and the potential clashes that arise between the importance placed in law on property rights with climate change and environmental action, such that environmental regulation becomes less effective in practice. Emily is also interested in the emergence of transnational law directed at addressing environmental problems. A final strand of research concerns the intersection of tort law and the courts with global environmental problems such as climate change.

Emily’s doctoral research focused on the influence of non-state actors on the development of domestic and EU legal responses to the decarbonisation of the fossil fuel sector. She adopted a transnational legal analysis to identify and analyse the ways in which transnational actors interact to create or change transnational legal norms, and the ways in which these norms are incorporated into national and supranational law.  Her work has been published in the Journal of Environmental Law and RECIEL. In addition to this research, she has been involved in several projects, including, assessing transnational environmental law in the context of the Anthropocene, the governance of atmospheric aerosols, the governance of bioenergy and strategic environmental litigation.

Publications

Key publications: 

Edited Books

Emily Webster and Laura Mai (eds) Transnational Environmental Law in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the Role of Law in Times of Planetary Change (Routledge, forthcoming).

Emily Webster, Ankita Gupta and Ruth Ambros (eds) Transnational Food Security (Routledge, 2020).

Book Chapters

Leslie-Anne Duvic-Paoli and Emily Webster, ‘Atmospheric Aerosol Loading’ in Duncan French and Louis Kotze (eds) Research Handbook on Law, Governance and Planetary Boundaries (Elgar, forthcoming).

Book Reviews

Emily Webster, ‘Global Justice and Climate Governance: Bridging Theory and Practice Alix Dietzel (2019), Edinburgh University Press) ISBN: 978-1-4744-3791-2’ (2019) 30(2) King’s Law Journal 326-329.

Peer Reviewed Articles

Melanie Murcott and Emily Webster, ‘Litigation and regulatory governance in the age of the Anthropocene: The case of fracking in the Karoo’ (2020) 11(1-2) Transnational Legal Theory 144-164.

Emily Webster, ‘Transnational legal processes, the EU and RED II: Strengthening the global governance of bioenergy’ (2019) 29(1) Review of European, Comparative and International Environmental Law 86-94.

Emily Webster, ‘Information Disclosure and the Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy: Climate-Related Risk in the UK and France’ (2019) 32 Journal of Environmental Law 279-308.

Editorials

Emily Webster and Laura Mai, ‘Transnational Environmental Law in the Age of the Anthropocene’ (2020) 11(1-2) Transnational Legal Theory 1-15.

Emily Webster and Peer Zumbansen, ‘Introduction: Transnational Food (In)Security’ (2019) 9(3-4) Transnational Legal Theory 175-190.

Teaching and Supervisions

Teaching: 

Emily convenes the National, Comparative and European Union Environmental Law and Policy paper and contributes to the International Environmental Law paper. She also teaches tort law and company law.

C-EENRG Fellow
Assistant Professor in Environmental Law, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge
Emily Webster

Affiliations

Classifications: 

 

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