H, Year 12 writes...

On 14th March, Jonathan R and I took the 7.30am train from Paddington to Oxford, to attend a Law Taster Day. The event began with a short introductory talk and then an extremely interesting and insightful one-hour lecture on criminal and intellectual property law by Matthew Dyson, a professor of civil and criminal law.

Within the lecture, Jonathan and I received a gourmet tasting menu on criminal law learning about different sections within criminal law such as physical elements - omissions; homicide- manslaughter and the difference between murder and manslaughter; mental elements - intention; inchoate offencesconspiracy and why conspiracy is a crime; secondary participation - joint enterprise and what should we do with groups committing crimes; general defencesmistaking self-defence; property offences - stealing and becoming owner at the same time; mental capacity defences - intoxication; and sexual offences - sexual assault and the definition of touching. We also learnt about different cases within these sections of criminal law such as (R V Miller 1983) and (R v Kingston 1995).

After the law lecture, we were split into groups and had our first seminar of the day. This was an introduction to climate litigation. At the start, we were given a case and a list detailing some of our human rights. The case briefly talked about the Paris Agreement and that governments should achieve becoming greenhouse gas neutral by 2050. The claimants within the case argued that the said government violated their fundamental rights by not doing enough to protect them from potential future impacts of climate change. Jonathan and I had to either declare or not declare that the government had violated their rights. We had to validate or invalidate the Climate Protection Law and, finally, order the said government to do more to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions in the country, if we believed so through reading the case.

Following this extremely fun and thought provoking task, the lecturer then talked about reallife cases which were and still are affected by climate change. One case we learnt about was Luciano Lliuya v RWE AG 2015.

Luciano Lliuya is a Peruvian farmer who lives in Huaraz, Peru. Every year, his farm has been affected by climate change, due to the melting of the mountain glaciers near his town. As a result, Luciano filed claims for declaratory judgment and damages in the District Court Essen, Germany against RWE,

Germany’s largest electricity producer, alleging that the company knowingly contributed to climate change by emitting substantial volumes of greenhouse gases. Luciano asked the court to order RWE to reimburse him for a portion of the costs that he and the Huaraz authorities are expected to incur from setting up flood protections. The share calculated amounted to 0.47% of the total cost and it was the same percentage as RWE’s estimated contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions since the beginning of industrialisation. The district court dismissed Luciano Lliuya’s request for declaratory and injunctive relief, as well as his request for damages.

After the seminar, Jonathan and I had a 45-minute tour of Lincoln College by a first year student at Oxford and had lunch in the College. To end the day, we had a final lecture by four Clifford Chance lawyers who previously studied at Oxford. They talked about what it’s like to study at Oxford University and to work at Clifford Chance (a magic circle law firm).