Sustainability Law

Our research advances the realisation of legally established global-to-local objectives in areas such as climate change mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity protection and restoration, and pollution prevention and environmental quality. To do this, we work across a wide range of legal fields: including environmental law, climate and energy law, constitutional and administrative law, property and contract law, legal theory, and international and EU law.

Our approach is grounded in systems thinking. We explore how law and legal systems shape, enable, or constrain sustainability transformations within dynamic social-ecological-technologicalsystems. We examine how legal frameworks interact with broader policy mixes and governance architectures, and how law can contribute to more just, resilient, and effective transformations.

Two overarching research questions guide our work:

• How and why do global-to-local legal systems hinder or promote sustainability transformation?
• How can legal systemic changes that support sustainability be identified and made legally operational?

We apply a multi-method approach that includes:

• Legal doctrinal analysis
• Empirical methods (e.g. interviews, case studies, regulatory impact assessments)
• Computational tools (e.g. legal text analysis, network modelling)
• Comparative and historical perspectives
• Theoretical and conceptual inquiry

This allows us to investigate how sustainability is conceptualised and addressed within legal systems and how law interacts with broader societal and environmental change processes.

Our research is applied across diverse social-ecological subsystems, such as:

• Climate and energy systems
• Global production and consumption cycles
• Biodiversity conservation and restoration
• Pollution prevention and control
• Urban governance and land use
• Water and marine ecosystems

By analysing how legal frameworks function within and across these domains, we assess the potential of law to drive systemic, cross-sectoral sustainability outcomes.

Our work is supported by national and EU-level competitive funding and has a strong real-world orientation. We collaborate actively with policymakers, legal professionals, and civil society through expert commentary, stakeholder workshops, blogs, and contributions to national, EU, and international legal and policy processes.