Specific skills
a. To appropriate the concepts, rules and principles of the Belgian, European and international law sources applicable to the environment and sustainable development;
b. Understand the interweaving of legal disciplines (private law, public law, European and international law) in the protection of the "environment";
c. To conduct a critical and interdisciplinary reflection on the way in which the law, associated with the economy, protects the environment and compensates for market failures;
d. To take the measure of the place occupied by international law and European law in the protection of the environment;
e. To be aware of the relative and evolving nature of legal solutions that are dependent on scientific progress and expertise, economic constraints and political power struggles;
f. To grasp the potentialities, qualities and shortcomings of the legal instrument in the protection of the environment and the implementation of sustainable development policies.
Transversal skills (soft skills)
a. Communicate in writing or orally a precise, nuanced, convincing and intelligible legal reasoning;
b. Defend a point of view in an argumentative and rigorous manner in a complex field;
c. Enhance the material taught by personal intervention and reflection (orally, in class and on the exam);
d. Develop a critical sense of a legal rule, a jurisprudential solution, a policy proposal or any other resource seen in the course;
e. Understand the reasoning of disciplines related to law, such as economics, physics and political science;
f. Demonstrate independence and responsibility in implementing tools leading to success.
The objective of the course is to analyse and explain to the lawyer and non-lawyer alike how the law responds to and can contribute to the protection of the environment using its own principles and techniques.
The course also aims to show how environmental law, and law in general, is evolving to give way to a new imperative, the need for sustainable development.
More broadly, the course aims to make students aware of the importance of the environmental and sustainable development issues faced by society in order to help them become committed citizens and responsible actors in society.
The climate catastrophes that have struck the planet, put into perspective by the latest IPCC report, suggest that the course on "Environmental Law and Sustainable Development", while traditionally an optional course, will occupy a central place in the training of current and future students, whether they are lawyers or not.
After identifying the sources of environmental law and sustainable development, the course highlights the major principles that structure the subject-matter (precautionary principle, polluter-pays principle, integration principle, etc.), while emphasising two new founding trends: the construction of an environmental democracy and the emergence of the notion of sustainable development in law (first part).
These teachings are reviewed in the light of interventions by experts from non-legal disciplines (climatology, economics, etc.) in the context of two lecture courses (second part).
Finally, current issues are addressed in a third part from the perspective of the teachers' research fields.
Introductory Part: The environment, a new object for law
Chap. 1. Emergence of environmental law
Chap. 2. A legal discipline under construction
Chap. 3. From environmental protection to sustainable development
Part I: Foundations of Environmental Law and Sustainable Development
Title I. Sources of environmental law
Title II. General Principles of Environmental Law
Title III. The construction of an “environmental democracy”
Title IV. The emergence of sustainable development in law
Part II: Environmental and sustainable development issues: a cross-disciplinary approach
Chap. 1. Why to act?
Chap. 2. How to act?
Part III: Specific issues in environmental and sustainable development law: capita selecta
Chap. 1. Environment and Human Rights
Chap. 2. Environment and CSR
Chap. 3. The law as an instrument in the fight against climate change
There are no practical exercises in this course.
The exam is oral and lasts about 20 minutes. It takes place in January and/or September. The student may use any legislative or jurisprudential text seen during the course, as long as it is not annotated.
The exam consists of three types of questions on different parts of the course material: