Program overview

Climate change will be a foremost theme that will influence financial activities, policy, and legal frameworks for years to come. In a noticeably short time span, climate change has become a global challenge calling for collective action. Climate change law is emerging as a new legal discipline. Using various case studies, this course will explore how climate change law relates to other areas of law and how climate change has elicited rulemaking process at the international, regional, national, and local levels. The class will be invited to study the negotiation process, implementation, and current status of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The class will then proceed to evaluate the various legal tools that are available at national and international level to address climate change, including cap-and-trade, carbon taxation, litigation, and voluntary actions.