Richard Macrory Prize
2023 winners announced!
Winner of the JEL Richard Macrory Prize for Best Article
Vilja Johansson, ‘Just Transition as an Evolving Concept in International Climate Law’.
The concept of ‘just transition’ reflects a new framework of analysis that provides space for environmental, climate and energy justice considerations. And yet it has received little attention from legal scholars. This article provides an original and thought-provoking insight into the meaning and legal implications of just transition within international climate law. Drawing on the international law rules on treaty interpretation, Vilja explores three different ways of understanding the legal implications of the just transition reference in the Paris Agreement, and the evolution of the concept in light of subsequent COP decisions. Vilja then turns to international efforts to operationalise the concept with a brief assessment of, for instance, the role of planning and reporting, and climate finance. Overall, the article provides a thoughtful, authoritative and progressive account of a concept that, moving forward, will likely lie at the heart of climate law and policy at all levels of decision-making. It will be a key point of reference for environmental law scholars and will undoubtedly stimulate new scholarship in the field.
JEL Richard Macrory Prize for Best Article: Honorable Mentions
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh and Justin Macinante, ‘Déjá vu All Over Again: Carbon Dioxide Removals (CDR) and Legal Liability’.
Although CDR technology is largely in its infancy, agreeing legal approaches to the allocation of liability can support the commercial development of a market in CDR project-based outcomes. Navraj and Justin provide strong critical insights into this complex problem, concluding that liability should remain with the party who carries out the CDR project.
Michèle Finck and Marie-Sophie Mueller, ‘Access to Data for Environmental Purposes: Setting the Scene and Evaluating Recent Changes to EU Data Law’.
This article looks in depth at the extent to which EU law shapes the use of data for environmental sustainability purposes. It is both reflective and forward-looking, focusing on the recently enacted Data Governance Act and draft Data Act and the extent to which they have the potential to facilitate access to data sharing. Michèle and Marie-Sophie guide the reader through a complex web of legal instruments and develop a series of well-crafted arguments, shining a light on the fact that new EU legal developments in this space curtail rather than enhance the availability of data for environmental sustainability purposes.
2022 Winners Announced!
Joint Winners of the JEL Richard Macrory Prize for Best Article
Eva Romée van der Marel, “Trading Plastic Waste in a Global Economy: Soundly Regulated by the Basel Convention?”
This paper is a significant, systematic contribution to the literature, being both authoritative in its doctrinal assessment of a key multilateral environmental agreement, but also displaying a true depth of insight challenging prevailing assumptions. The country of export is a key player in the waste trade and this article shines a needed, and deeply analytical, light on the responsibilities of this country. The paper also draws carefully and authoritatively on the jurisprudence of international courts and tribunals to provide an article that will come to be an international reference point.
Chris Hilson, “The Role of Narrative in Environmental Law: The Nature of Tales and the Tales of Nature”
This paper was truly ambitious in its objective and took the journal in a new, and dare we say daring, direction seeking to pose challenging questions – and some timely answers – as to who are we as environmental lawyers, and what do we do. To that extent, it encapsulated the notion of innovative scholarship. Powerful and thought-provoking, no one reading it could be left with a real sense of the power of the article as a continuing radical medium. The breadth of literature and the “narrative” (methodology) used to talk about the role of narratives means this will become a “go-to” article for many.
JEL Richard Macrory Prize for Best Article: Honorable Mentions
Lovleen Bhullar, “Environmental Constitutionalism and Duties of Individuals in India”
This article is a thought-provoking piece about the relationship of rights and individual obligations within a particular constitutional order (namely India), effectively bringing legal culture considerations into the analysis. It is especially innovative and skilled in traversing environmental law, constitutional law and human rights. A better and more nuanced understanding of why, and how, environmental law develops within a particular legal order, will only enrich our discipline, and this paper is a great example of this.
2021 Winners Announced!
Joint Winners of the JEL Richard Macrory Prize for Best Article
Boute, ‘Environmental Force Majeure: Relief from Fossil Energy Contracts in the Decarbonisation Era’
Anatole Boute highlights long-term energy supply contracts as a potential obstacle to low-carbon transition. Boute considers the extent to which force majeure clauses are likely to enable energy suppliers to avoid liability, in circumstances in which traditional high-carbon forms of supply are becoming economically unviable. The panel were impressed by the article’s use of rigorous doctrinal analysis of relevant case law and arbitration awards from across a range of jurisdictions. As well as spotlighting an issue of potentially great importance, the article valuably highlights the role contractual practices play in shaping responses to environmental problems.
Wesche, ‘Rights of Nature in Practice: A Case Study on the Impacts of the Colombian Atrato River Decision’
Philipp Wesche provides a fresh and thought-provoking perspective on the global phenomenon of constitutionalising rights for nature. He explores the implementation of the Colombian Constitutional Court's recognition of the Atrato River as a legal subject, in order to tell us more about the challenges of making environmental progress through the use of rights for nature. The panel enjoyed the distinctive and well-executed methodology. The findings are important and likely to be significant beyond the particular case study.
2020 Winner Announced!
Winner of the JEL Richard Macrory Prize for Best Article
Joanne Hawkins, 'We Want Experts: Fracking and the Case of Expert Excess' (2020) 32 JEL 1–24
Joanne Hawkins innovatively and thought-provokingly questions some fundamental assumptions about the benefits of direct public participation and pushes back on the view that democratic participation provides the sole key to legitimacy of environmental decision-making. Even in this populist era, her interviews of participants in decisions about fracking show that legitimacy hinges on a decision-making process that combines expert risk assessment with goals reflecting public input. The methodology is carefully and appropriately crafted for her inquiry. The findings are important and likely to be applicable more broadly outside the area of fracking.
JEL Richard Macrory Prize for Best Article: Honorable Mentions
Xiangbai He, 'In the Name of Legitimacy and Efficiency: Evaluating China’s Legal Reform on EIA'
Xiangbai provides an extraordinarily well-crafted, nuanced, and detailed look at reform of Chinese environmental assessment, revealing that it has been extraordinarily ambitious but not always properly executed. He not only provides excellent information about an unusual environmental assessment system in an important country but also a revealing look at how Chinese political culture both frustrates and catalyses reforms.
John Condon, 'Biodiversity Offsetting and the English Planning System: A Regulatory Analysis'
John Condon shows that biodiversity offsets are extremely problematic without centralised planning and public involvement. He provides an exceptionally perceptive and thorough analysis of this complex problem in the context of English land use planning and while it is focused on English law, the analysis is also relevant to other jurisdictions that struggle with biodiversity offsetting.
2019 Winner Announced!
Winner of the JEL Richard Macrory Prize for Best Article
Natasha Affolder, 'Contagious Environmental Lawmaking' (2019) 31 JEL 187-212
The judges found this article altogether refreshing, being both perceptively insightful and original – it will undoubtedly have a key role in shifting the debate in this increasingly important area. Although the phenomenon of legal transplantation is a concept that many of us readily recognise, there is little in the way of excellent literature on environmental law legal transplants (particularly on the matter of environmental legislation, certainly in contrast to litigation). There is even less literature which, at the same time, is also theoretically informed and persuasive. The author’s use of the environmental assessment processes across a broad-ranging set of jurisdictions to illustrate her argument was particularly insightful. The article is the product of deep and serious reflection and thus, in the traditional sense of the term, is without doubt, ‘thought provoking’.
JEL Richard Macrory Prize for Best Article: Honorable Mentions
Vito De Lucia, 'Bare Nature. The Biopolitical Logic of the International Regulation of Invasive Alien Species' (2019) 31 JEL 109-134
Jonathan Pickering et al., 'Global Climate Governance Between Hard and Soft Law: Can the Paris Agreement’s ‘Crème Brûlée’ Approach Enhance Ecological Reflexivity?' (2019) 31 JEL 1-28
These papers demonstrated excellent scholarship; combining in their own way a range of normative, ethical and scientific issues, and thereby drawing from a range of literatures to inform their legal insights. Be it the theoretical framing of attempts to regulate invasive species within the concept of bio-politics or the shifting regulatory forms and types in climate change governance, these papers were skilfully written, original in their argumentation and/or construction, persuasive in their argumentation, and deserve honourable mentions.
2018 Winner Announced!
Winner of the JEL Richard Macrory Prize for Best Article
Katherine Sanders, '‘Beyond Human Ownership’? Property, Power and Legal Personality for Nature in Aotearoa New Zealand' (2017) 30 JEL 207-234
JEL Richard Macrory Prize for Best Article: Honorable Mention
Marie-Catherine Petersmann, 'Narcissus’ Reflection in the Lake: Untold Narratives in Environmental Law Beyond the Anthropocentric Frame' (2018) 30 JEL 235-259
The judges were incredibly impressed by the quality of all the papers that we read. It is great to see so much high quality work being produced in environmental law, spanning a wide range of topics, jurisdictions, and intellectual approaches in a way that really enriches the subject. The contributors are all to be complimented on their work - and also the Editor and reviewers who play a vital part in refining the initial submissions to ensure the absolute excellence of the end result. It is a great loss for us all that our busy lives mean that we rarely read with care articles other than those of immediate use to us, missing out on so much informative and fascinating work.
Inevitably the high quality of the papers made our task difficult, but we decided that the prize should be awarded to Katherine Sanders for her article on the legal personality being conferred on aspects of nature in New Zealand. This paper combined empirical engagement with critical reflection on the history of a settler state, the processes of reparations, indigenous customary law and constitutionalism. It showed how the legal personality that is being granted can be seen as an escape from conventional legal categories, especially concepts of property, rather than being viewed through a conventional legal lens. Thought-provoking, innovative, illuminating and providing strong critical insights, the paper fully deserves the prize for “the most thought-provoking and innovative article”.
Beyond that we wish to give special mention to Marie-Catherine Petersmann, who explored a seemingly well-trodden issue – the tension between human rights and environmental protection – but in doing so shed light on well-buried structural conflicts in a way that is new and stimulating in its method, as well as useful in showing why the old debate needs to be revisited. It is not only novel legal developments that can generate innovative and thought-provoking analysis.
So many other articles could also merit special mention, including those which may not have set us thinking in new directions but bring together new information, reveal deep critical insight and demonstrate a mastery of complex topics in a way that truly enlightens the reader. If you don’t already, we strongly encourage reading each issue of the Journal in full.
2017 Winner Announced!
Winner of the JEL Richard Macrory Prize for Best Article
Ben France-Hudson, 'Surprisingly Social: Private Property and Environmental Management' (2017) 29 JEL 101-128
This winning piece contained a very thoughtful reflection upon, and challenge to, entrenched notions of private property. Drawing upon philosophy, legal theory, as well as examples of the emissions trading scheme and fisheries quota system in New Zealand, France-Hudson does a splendid job in making the argument for a social obligation norm. This innovative and ambitious piece offered up an insightful and rigorous analysis which pushed our thinking on the value of private property in environmental law.
JEL Richard Macrory Prize for Best Article: Honorable Mentions
Joanne Scott, Tristan Smith, Nishatabbas Rehmatulla and Ben Milligan, ‘The Promise and Limits of Private Standards in Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Shipping’ (2017) 29 JEL 231-262
Helena Howe, and ‘Making Wild Law Work—The Role of ‘Connection with Nature’ and Education in Developing an Ecocentric Property Law’ (2017) 29 JEL 19-46
The two honourable mentions were engaging, articulate and of relevance beyond their immediate subject areas. Both drew on diverse strands of thinking, deftly wove in theory, and made for very thoughtful reading.
2016 Winner Announced!
Winner of JEL Richard Macrory Prize for Best Article
Emma Lees, 'Allocation of Decision Making Power under the Habitats Directive' (2016) 28 JEL 191
In the context of a 2016 volume packed with a number of methodologically innovative research articles, including much exciting interdisciplinary work, the panel was struck by the originality and topicality of Emma’s use of rigorous doctrinal analysis to learn about the role of administrative, scientific and judicial authority in habitats protection.
Drawing on a close reading of a selection of case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the UK courts, Emma makes an important distinction between the emphasis placed on achieving the substantive ‘result’ of environmental protection within the CJEU, and the emphasis placed on the procedures designed to achieve that result within UK law.
Without suggesting that one approach or the other is better, Emma argues for ‘us to consider more fully what we want to use the judiciary for in an environmental context’. Of particular interest is Emma’s suggestion that environmental lawyers in the UK ‘embrace’ the common law process, both in terms of giving meaning to environmental statutes incrementally, against the backdrop of particular cases, and in terms of ‘well-established common law principles of judicial review’.
This, then, is an article on EU law that the panel considered had grown in importance in light of the EU referendum.
JEL Richard Macrory Prize for Best Article: Honorable Mention
J McGee and J Steffek, 'The Copenhagen Turn in Global Climate Governance and the Contentious History of Differentiation in International Law' (2016) 28 JEL 37
This article on the UN Climate Change legal regime impressed the judges by adding something new and important to a crowded field of scholarship. The authors’ central argument is that the climate law literature is dominated by what they call ‘short term’ analyses of the evolution of the Treaty regime. Drawing on Karl Polanyi’s ‘historical economic sociology’, and combining this with doctrinal analysis, the authors argue that the ‘Copenhagen turn’ out of which the Paris Agreement emerged is part of a broader and deeper rooted conflict over the design of institutions of global governance – a conflict which centres on a struggle between liberalisation and interventionism. They see this struggle continuing over the coming years: i.e. they do not see the redistributive, interventionist ideas underpinning the Kyoto Protocol as ‘having run their course’ as a consequence of the Paris Agreement’s emphasis on liberalisation.
2015 Winner Announced!
The 2015 Richard Macrory Prize has been announced. The Judging Panel says of this year's prize:
"The judging panel was unanimous in finding that the JEL has had a very impressive year in its scholarly output. We did not have an easy task picking a winner from the articles that have been published in the three issues of 2015. This was particularly because the combination of the year’s articles – with their range of methodologies, jurisdictions, career stages of authors and topics – made the field so impressive. Selecting one winner does not capture that richness."
The 2015 Richard Macrory Prize was awarded to Vito De Lucia for his paper 'Competing Narratives and Complex Genealogies: The Ecosystem Approach in International Environmental Law '.
The Judging Panel writes about this paper:
"This article stood out with its masterful handling of a range of disciplinary approaches to consider an important issue – how we can understand the complexity of the ecosystem approach, which is a now prevalent internationally as a ‘new paradigm of environmental management’. We felt this paper has the potential to be a landmark paper for years to come and moves forward debate about concepts of environmental management in several interesting ways. In drawing on ideas from philosophy/ethics, international environmental law, ecology and legal theory, the article also forces reflection on how we understand other contested concepts in environmental law, and how dominant narratives and paradigms can influence and infiltrate understandings of legal concepts, even when they are apparently beneficial for the environment."
2015 Honorable Mentions
Kelvin FK Low and Jolene Lin for 'Carbon Credits as EU Like It: Property, Immunity, TragiCO2medy?'
The Judging Panel writes about this paper:
"This article is an excellent example of how excellent legal scholarship can make a valuable contribution in environmental law. The authors consider, from a property law perspective, the legal nature of a carbon credit. This thoughtful and rigorous analysis would be very helpful in a relevant legal dispute. The approach of the article moves the subject on in thinking about how environmental law concepts and more conventional areas of legal doctrine interrelate, examining how environmental regulation interacts with legal systems more deeply."
Timo Koivurova, Paula Kankaanpää, and Adam Stępień for 'Innovative Environmental Protection: Lessons from the Arctic'
The Judging Panel writes about this paper:
"The panel found this piece fascinating in shedding light on a unique regime of governance – the Arctic Council. The authors show how a relatively informal system of regional governance has evolved over time to become an influential regional body by establishing an epistemic community and developing expertise. The methodological approach adopted by the authors in exposing these developments demonstrated a real flair for understanding the complex aspects of institutional organisation and change."
2014 Winners Announced!
In the first year of the Annual Richard Macrory Prize for the Best Article in the Journal of Environmental Law there were two prize-winning articles... the prize goes to:
- Mulugeta Ayalew, Jonathan Chenoweth, Rosalind Malcolm, Yacob Mulugetta, Lorna Grace Okotto, and Stephen Pedley * for their article, 'Small Independent Water Providers: Their Position in the Regulatory Framework for the Supply of Water in Kenya and Ethiopia'
- Bettina Lange and Mark Shepheard for their article, 'Changing Conceptions of Rights to Water?—An Eco-Socio-Legal Perspective'
*Mulugeta Ayalew, Jonathan Chenoweth, Rosalind Malcolm, Yacob Mulugetta, Lorna Grace Okotto, and Stephen Pedleythe are donating the prize money of £250 to the Haramaya University in Ethiopia , a worthy recipient.
Annual Richard Macrory Prize for the Best Article in the Journal of Environmental Law
The Editorial Board and the Advisory Board of the Journal of Environmental Law are delighted to announce the creation of the Annual Richard Macrory Prize for the Best Article in the Journal of Environmental Law . The Prize, £500 of OUP books, will be awarded each year for the most thought-provoking and innovative article published in the Journal in that year. The winning article, and any articles that receive Honorable Mentions, will be made freely available to read for the duration of one (1) year. All articles published in the Journal are eligible for the award.
The panel judging the prize will consist of five Board Members (excluding the General Editor) and the decision will be announced by December of each year. The first prize will be awarded in 2014.
Professor Richard Macrory is a leading figure in both UK environmental law scholarship and practice. Richard was the founding General Editor of the Journal and the criteria for the prize (‘innovative and thought provoking’) reflects what Richard fostered throughout his long and vibrant editorship. Alongside this, Richard, has played a crucial role in ensuring rigorous debate around environmental law issues as well as being a constant source of encouragement for younger scholars and lawyers.
