Climate change challenge

Human rights judge favours national parliaments over international courts

The “unprecedented global challenges posed to all of us by climate change” will have to be resolved through domestic democratic processes rather than by international litigation or treaty making, the UK’s judge at the European Court of Human Rights predicted in a lecture he gave in London last week.

Judge Tim Eicke KC was taking stock of developments in the 12 months since his court adopted its groundbreaking KlimaSeniorinnen judgment, approved by a majority of 16 to one with Eicke being the sole dissenter.

Judge Eicke (left), giving a lecture chaired by Lord Sales, a justice of the Supreme Court

The judge, whose nine-year term of office ends later this year, was speaking at UCL on Thursday evening in an event jointly organised by the university’s public international law group, its Centre for Law and Environment and the UCL Institute for Human Rights.