Climate Conscious Lawyering, with Justice Brian Preston

Please join AELA for our July webinar, featuring our guest speaker the Honourable Justice Brian Preston, Chief Judge of the Land and Environment Court, NSW, discussing how lawyers must engage with the reality of climate change in their ongoing work. Justice Preston will give a 30-40 minute presentation, and then AELA’s National Convenor, Dr Michelle Maloney, will facilitate Q&A with participants.

ABOUT THE WEBINAR

Climate change is a multi-scalar problem with local and global dimensions. The interactions between these scales have elevated climate issues to the forefront of economic, corporate and public law. No longer merely the purview of environmental law, climate change has implications for daily legal practice and lawyers are increasingly being recognised as climate change actors. Climate change places a responsibility on lawyers to adopt a climate conscious rather than a climate blind approach in their daily legal practice. A climate conscious approach requires an active awareness of the reality of climate change and how it interacts with legal problems. Consistent with legal ethics, there are at least five ways in which lawyers can implement this climate conscious approach in their daily legal practice: adopting a holistic legal approach; effective identification, interpretation and application of legal rules; emphasising ethical duties of lawyers; acknowledging the overriding duty to the court and upholding the integrity and values of the legal system; and pursuing a personal ethical approach. Each of these ways challenges common conceptions (or rather misconceptions) about the role and duties of a lawyer.

ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKER

The Hon. Justice Brian J Preston FRSN SC

Justice Preston is the Chief Judge of the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales. Prior to being appointed in November 2005, he was a senior counsel practising primarily in New South Wales in environmental, planning, administrative and property law. He has lectured in post-graduate environmental law for nearly 30 years. He is the author of Australia’s first book on environmental litigation and 139 articles, book chapters and reviews on environmental law, administrative and criminal law. He holds numerous editorial positions in environmental law publications and has been involved in a number of international environmental consultancies and capacity-building programs, including for judiciaries throughout Asia.

Justice Preston is an Official Member of the Judicial Commission of NSW, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law, Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW and Honorary Fellow of the Environment Institute of the Australia and New Zealand. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by Macquarie University in 2018. He is a member of various international environmental law committees and advisory boards, including the interim governing council of the Global Judicial Institute on the Environment. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at the University of Sydney, Western Sydney University and Southern Cross University.

In 2019 Justice Preston was a Visiting Fellow at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, and in 2020 was the Robert S Campbell Jr Visiting Fellow at Magdalen College, University of Oxford.

MORE INFORMATION

Email: events@earthlaws.org.au

Website: https://www.earthlaws.org.au/events/