Lawyers are to blame for climate change: Yeah, nah, yeah?
In this seminar, Professor Steven Vaughan (University College London Faculty of Laws) explores the role of lawyers in exacerbating climate change for their clients.
A former environmental lawyer in private practice himself (working for BP and others), Professor Vaughan examines the rules that govern how lawyers should act - including their conflicting duties to clients, to the public interest, to act with integrity - and explores what theories of lawyers’ ethics tell us about the special place of lawyers in society.
His main argument is that lawyers need to face into, and not shy away from, the hard moral questions about the work they do for their clients that has significant carbon impacts.