03/03/2026 - Lecture by Liz Fisher : "Environmental Law, Law Jobs, and Legal Expertise"

On Tusday 3 March, Liz Fisher (Professor of Environmental Law at the University of Oxford and holder of the 2025-2026 Ganshof van der Meersch Chair) will give a public lecture titled "Environmental Law, Law Jobs, and Legal Expertise". She will be welcomed at the Université libre de Bruxelles by Professors Chiara Armeni and Emmanuel Slautsky (Faculty of Law and Criminology). The lecture will be followed by a reception.

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Abstract

Environmental lawyers, it is often thought, are in the business of saving the world. But what do environmental lawyers actually do? This lecture is an exploration of the 'law jobs' that environmental lawyers carry out. These jobs require active legal work and the evolution of legal imagination. None of this is easy. The work of environmental lawyers requires legal expertise - to be a good environmental lawyer you need be a brilliant lawyer. This lecture identifies what that legal expertise entails.

Biographical Note

Grounded in national common law jurisdictions, Liz Fisher's work explores the mental constructs lawyers and legal scholars use to reason, particularly in relation public administration and environmental problems. She has published numerous works, including Administrative Competence: Reimagining Administrative Law (CUP 2020), co-authored with Sidney Shapiro, and Risk Regulation and Administrative Constitutionalism (Bloomsbury 2007), which received awards from the American Bar Association and the Society of Legal Scholars respectively.

Her other publications include Environmental Law: A Very Short Introduction (OUP 2017) and Environmental Law: Text, Cases and Materials (Fisher, Lange and Scotford, OUP 2019), as well as two recently co-edited volumes: The Foundations and Future of Public Law (OUP 2020) and An Environmental Court in Action: Function, Doctrine and Process (Hart 2022).