On the 12th of November 2018, the second lecture of this year was held. For this event, the committee had two new committee members; Tjerk and Lisa, who joined the committee and this helped the event a lot!

The lecture started with speaker Marijn Kingma, who is a lawyer at Höcker Advocaten. She worked on the Urgenda case against the Dutch government. She started by giving us some facts about the current state of climate change and some other facts important for the case. Furthermore, she spoke about the judicial process and the positions both sides took. Her colleague, Koos van den Berg, was also present. Koos was the attorney of record for Urgenda and could, therefore, answer many of the questions from the audience.

After that, Professor Elbert de Jong from Utrecht University gave a more general view on state liability in environmental cases. He started his part by discussing the different tort’s public impact mechanisms. After that, he discussed multiple theories that could be used in liability cases in which a state is involved.

All in all, we are now aware of the concrete facts regarding the Urgenda case and have learned various theories of state liability, which we can also apply to other matters. The speakers were very informative and were able to communicate their story very well. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we do, we would like to see you again at the next lecture!