Impact

Ecological and social justice are the heart of sustainable economic legal practices. Over the past four years the Sustainable Global Economic Law (SGEL) research project has deepened our understanding of how global economic law regulates the economy to legitimize unsustainable practices, and what it can do to address them. It has done so through SGEL members' research, legal education renewals, high-profile international events, and collaboration with international and domestic legal networks. SGEL members work on a variety of cross-disciplinary issues from transnational climate litigation, the crises of care and gender inequalities, food governance, law and technology, to new ways of thinking about private economic law.

In this short video, Professor Ingo Venzke and Dr Ivana Isailović introduce SGEL:

Flagship Projects

Summer School

2024

The 2024 Summer School focused on bridging critical legal conversation on law, political economy, sustainability and legal practice. It gathered emerging scholars from India, Brazil, Poland and Italy - among others - working on family law, international investment and competition law, property law and sustainable finance in relation to ecological and social breakdowns.

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2023

The 2023 Summer School featured thematic sessions exploring the links between law, sustainability and environmental justice, and the meanings of ‘just transitions'.

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2022
The 2022 summer school created a unique space for interdisciplinary conversations on global economic law and sustainability, in the context of accelerating climate change, and the persistence of socio-economic inequalities.

Here are some of the themes covered:

the divides between social and environmental justice

intersectionality as legal method(s) and practice(s)

sustainable global markets & the links between the economy, gender, race and culture

(re) imagining sustainable futures
2021

In 2021, Candida Leone organized a 4 day summer retreat with a small group of PhD candidates from UvA, Tilburg, Open University and Maastricht during which instructors from UvA hosted conversations and served as commentators on participants' projects.

SGEL Lecture Series 2021-2024

Over the past 4 years, SGEL hosted a lecture series featuring an exceptional lineup of speakers covering a wide range of issue on law, political economy, social and climate justice in globalized contexts.

Many of the presentations are recorded and can be viewed on our youtube page.

For a full list of all of our past speakers, take a look here.

SGEL Research

2024

Here is a small selection of some of the work our researchers published in 2024.

de Boer, N.J.; van 't Klooster, J.M.; Grünewald, S.N. The law and politics of independent policy coordination: fiscal and sustainability considerations in the European Central Bank’s monetary policy. Kern Alexander & Seraina Grünewald (eds), Central Banking and Sustainability. Oxford University Press, 2024.

Burgers, L., Błaszczyk, C., Bernet-Kempers, E. Fenced Europe: A more-than-human perspective to border control: The case of Białowieża. European Law Open, April 2024

Cseres, K.J. Energy Consumer Law and Governance in Hungary. Routledge Handbook of Consumer Protection and Behaviour in Energy Markets . ed. / M. Czarnecka; T. Soliman Hunter; J. Malinauskaite; M. K Kraśniewski. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2024.

Cusato, E.; Jones, E. The ‘imbroglio’ of ecocide: A political economic analysis. Leiden Journal of International Law, Vol. 37, No. 1, 03.2024, p. 42-61.

Eckes, C. Constitutionalising Climate Mitigation Norms in Europe. Constitutionalism and Transnational Governance Failures. ed. A. Steinbach; E.U. Petersmann. Brill Nijhoff, 2024.

Isailović , I. The Political Economy of Abortion Law in the EU, Law & Political Economy Blog, July 2024

Leone, C. Who's afraid of sustainability? A primer for mainstreaming sustainability in private law education. Routledge Handbook of Private Law and Sustainability. ed. / M. Santos Silva; A. Nicolussi; C. Wendehorst; P.S. Coderch; M. Clément; F. Zoll. Routledge, 2024. p. 84-100

Wewerinke-Singh, M. Towards a Non-Use Regime on Solar Geoengineering: Lessons from International Law and Governance. Gupta, A.; Biermann, F.; Driel, E. van et al. Transnational Environmental Law, February 2024.
2023

Bartl, M. Imaginaries of Prosperity as Constitutional Imaginaries. European Constitutional Imaginaries: Between Ideology and Utopia. ed. / J. Komárek. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. p. 360-377.

Bogoeski, V. Nonwaivability of Labour Rights, Individual Waivers and the Emancipatory Function of Labour Law. In: Industrial Law Journal, Vol. 52, No. 1, 03.2023, p. 179–213.

Bose, D. Decentring narratives around business and human rights instruments: An example of the French devoir de vigilance law. In: Business and Human Rights Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1, 02.2023, p. 18-42.

Cusato, E. Ecology in the war against Ukraine and beyond. In: ESIL Newsletter, Vol. 2023, No. Winter, 2, 2023.

Eckes, C. The Autonomy of EU Law: the Case of the Energy Charter Treaty. European Papers.

Ferrari, Valeria (Editor); Leiter, Andrea (Editor); Idelberger, Florian (Editor) et al. Log Out. A Glossary of Technological Resistance and Decentralization. Institute of Network Cultures, 2023.

Leone, C.; van Duin, J. Doubling down on debt? Legal responses to private debt as a business model in the Netherlands. Regulation of Debt Collection in Europe: Understanding Informal Debt Collection Practices. ed. / C.-G. Stănescu. London: Routledge, 2023. p. 116-137 (Routledge Research in Finance and Banking Law).

Lorenzo, J.A.P, Differential Treatment and Inequalities under the Sustainable Development Goals: Beyond Preferential Market Access. In: Law and Development Review, 05.06.2023.

Venzke, I. & Isailovic, I. Law-Law-Land. A Conversation about International Law, Sustainability, and Solidarity. In: Arts of the Working Class, issue 26

2022

Here's a selection of papers published in 2022 by some of the SGEL researchers.

Bartl, M. & van der Horst, N. Taking the Green Transition Seriously: A Proposal for a ‘Transition Reserve’. Enabling Transition of Large Emitters in the Netherlands. August 2022

Bogoeski, V. Continuities of exploitation: seasonal migrant workers in German agriculture during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Law & Society, October 2022

Broulík, J., Cultural Capture of Competition Policy: Exploring the Risk in the US and the EU. World Competition, Vol. 45, No. 2, 2022, p. 159-194.

Burgers, L. An Apology Leading to Dystopia: Or, Why Fuelling Climate Change Is Tortious, Transnational Environmental Law, Vol. 11, June 2022

Donders, Y.; Tararas, K. Mainstreaming Science and Human Rights in UNESCO. The Right to Science: Then and Now. ed. / H. Porsdam; S. Porsdam Mann. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2022. p. 124-139.

Eckes, C. Strategic climate litigation and polarisation: Fanning or smothering the flames of societal conflicts? 2022. Faculty of Law, Department of Economics, Leiden University.

Eckes, C.; Ankersmit, L.J. The compatibility of the Energy Charter Treaty with EU law. 2022. 60 p.

Eller, K., Salminen, J., Viljanen, M., Sobel-Read, K., Digital platforms as second-order lead firms: Beyond the industrial/digital divide in regulating value chains, European Review of Private Law

Isailović, I., Towards a Sustainable Global Economic Law: Shifts, Ruptures and Social Justice, Transformative Private Law Blog, July 4th, 2022

Leiter, A., Petersmann, M., Tech‑based Prototypes in Climate Governance: On Scalability, Replicability, and Representation, Law & Critique, July 2022

Leone, C., A (private law) theory for sustainable legal education?, German Law Journal, Vol. 23, July 2022

Mak, C., Corporate sustainability due diligence: more than ticking the boxes?, Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law, Vol. 29, June 2022

Mann, J.K, Risky Business: will TotalEnergies be complicit in international crimes if it continues doing business in Russia? ReThinking SLIC, April 2022.

Tagiuri, G. How EU Law Politicizes Markets and Creates Opportunities for Progressive Coding. European Law Open.

Venzke, I. The Practice of Interpretation in International Law: Strategies of Critique. International Legal Theory: Foundations and Frontiers. ed. Jeff Dunoff; Mark A. Pollack. Oxford University Press, 2022.

Vidigal, G.; Venzke, I., Of False Conflicts and Real Challenges: Trade Agreements, Climate Clubs, and Border Adjustments. AJIL unbound, Vol. 116, 2022, p. 202-207.

Weimer, M.; Morvillo, M. Who shapes the CJEU regulatory jurisprudence? On the epistemic power of economic actors and ways to counter it, European Law Open, November 2022

Collective Projects

Green Deals & Social Justice - with Afronomics Law

AfronomicsLaw & SGEL partnered up for a symposium on Green Deals and Justice. The contributions brought together a diverse set of perspectives with essays from scholars from the Global South & the Global North. Convened by Ivana Isailović, Adebayo Majekolagbe, and Nona Tamale.

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Radical Imagining of ‘Just & Green’ Futures - with TWAIL Review & the art centre Mediamatic

In July 2022, Laura Burgers and Ivana Isailović organized an event at the arts centre Mediamatic in Amsterdam that provided a space to reflect on what just futures after the ‘green transition’ would look like by bringing together scholars, thinkers, and artists. Speakers were asked to reflect on what ‘just green futures’ meant to them, and what are the practices, knowledges, and laws that they think should be nurtured and adopted to make just green futures possible. TWAIL Review published these short essays based on the presentations, accompanied by drawings from artist Kyra Sacks.

TWAIL Review
Arts of the Working Class

In 2023, TEGL (Transformative Effects of Globalisation in Law) partnered with the Arts of the Working Class, a multi-lingual street journal, to showcase some of the research happening in the project.

SGEL researchers that contributed essays include Johanna Lorenzo, Klaas Eller & Vladimir Bogoeski, Ingo Venzke, Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh and a conversation on international law, sustainability and solidarity with Ingo Venzke & Ivana Isailović.
Towards a Sustainable Global Economic Law

In 2021, Ivana Isailović organised the conference, Towards a Sustainable Global Economic Law: Shifts, Ruptures and Social Justice. The goal of the conference was to interrogate the role of global economic law in the simultaneous (re)production of gendered, racial and class-based inequalities, and environmental disasters, and how the concept of ‘sustainability’ can be (re)claimed to address social and environmental justice issues.

Education

Many SGEL researchers have set up innovative courses in line with SGEL lines of research across EU, international and private law LLMs:

a mandatory Master law course in the EU law LLM program on EU trade and competition law and policies' role in climate and social crises, including sessions on the legal regulation of meat during which students represent various actors - from animal welfare and environmental activists to meat industry lobbies — defining what sustainable EU laws and policies should be. (convenor Ivana Isailović)
Making Markets beyond the State course, where private lawyers cooperate with investment lawyers, bringing together students from Amsterdam, South Africa and Brazil in a global virtual classroom (convenors Klass Eller & Geraldo Vidigal)
International Law and Sustainable Development course focusing on the role of international law for regenerating the earth’s ecosystem, featuring a hackathon/pressure-cooker: students choose a sustainable development goal and prepare a brief on how the UN Conference on Trade and Development should advance this goal. (convenors Ingo Venzke & Andrea Leiter)