Thematic area: Sustainability and business
PI: Professor Vibe Ulfbeck
Projects and themes
JURiB has already launched three projects that combine education and research. The projects examine the legal implications of the sustainability agenda from three perspectives: business perspective, public sector perspective and international perspective.
The initiative will allocate funding to new projects within the five themes and areas outlined below. The first call for proposals will be announced on this website end of January
Thematic areas
At the launch of the initiative, five key themes and focus areas were identified to help strengthen and develop legal skills in sustainability.
Private companies face major challenges in driving the green transition, which calls for strategic decisions to support more sustainable development. This means evaluating goals and risks across climate, environmental, social, and governance areas. At the same time, businesses must comply with relevant legislation and ESG reporting requirements, while ensuring their policies are embedded throughout the value chain via contracts and corporate governance tools. The sustainability agenda therefore demands advanced skills in private law and related fields, including contract law, tort law, company law, employment law, marketing law, consumer protection and investor rights.
Lawyers in the public sector – at national, regional and local levels – need to be able to address sustainability issues in a wide range of contexts. This includes specific areas such as urban development, but also more broadly when making administrative decisions or carrying out supervisory functions, where it must be assessed whether and how sustainability considerations can or should be considered. The same applies when entering public contracts, where procurement rules may limit the extent to which sustainability factors can be included. There is therefore a need to examine whether sustainability can serve as a legitimate criterion in certain areas, and whether such considerations may lawfully be incorporated even where legislation does not explicitly provide for them. This calls for the development of skills in areas such as administrative law, municipal law, social law, environmental law and public procurement law.
Sustainability requirements are often set at a global or EU level – for example through conventions, directives and regulations (‘hard law’) or through international guidelines developed by the UN, OECD or non-governmental actors (‘soft law’). These supranational regulatory initiatives interact in complex ways. At the same time, national sustainability rules can raise questions about their compatibility with international free trade principles and the EU’s fundamental legal principles on free movement and competition. Understanding how these measures affect domestic law calls for solid skills in public international law, human rights law, EU law, trade law and competition law.
The sustainability agenda can reshape our understanding of democracy as reflected in national constitutions. Climate litigation may, for instance, blur the boundaries between legislative and judicial roles, and between law and politics. The fast-paced changes also strain legal safeguards built into appeal rights and consultation periods. It further raises procedural questions around access to justice - such as standing and legal interest - as new types of claims are brought by new categories of claimants. Understanding these issues requires insight into areas such as constitutional law, procedural law and criminal law.
Sustainability is largely driven by regulation, which shapes the framework for the actions of citizens, organisations and businesses. At present, regulatory simplification is a recurring theme. It is therefore essential to analyse existing rules against specific sustainability objectives and assess their potential to further support sustainable development. At the same time, there is a need for well-founded legal policy proposals for adjustments or more substantial reforms. Such reviews are relevant across many areas of law, including highly regulated fields such as taxation and environmental legislation, as well as other domains at both national and international level.
