Description

Chernobyl. Bhopal. Exxon Valdez. Kuwait’s burning oil wells. Through human malfeasance, petroleum spills, toxic leaks, deforestation, napalming and other targeted habitat destruction have permanently polluted biospheres, killing untold flora, fauna and humans. Such acts of ‘ecocide’ have been only lightly punished or not at all. But can international criminal law (ICL) do better going forward? This is a pressing question because the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide has unveiled a proposal generating much scholarly discussion about ecocide liability but nothing regarding punishment. During this talk Gregory Gordon will examine and discuss the relevant criteria for sentencing ecocide. The various lenses through which punishment can be explored—historical, statutory, penological, philosophical, human rights, and, in this case, ecological—will inform the discussion.

Gregory S. Gordon is Professor of Law (with tenure) at Peking University School of Transnational Law. Before that, he was a tenured Professor of Law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Faculty of Law. Before joining academia, he worked with the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where he worked as law clerk to U. S. District Court Judge Martin Pence (District of Hawaii), a litigator in San Francisco and served as Legal Officer and Deputy Team Leader for the landmark “Media” cases, the first international post-Nuremberg prosecutions of radio and print media executives for incitement to genocide.

Registration

SCILJ appreciates your registration at scilj@juridicum.su.se before 19 November.