As you may have already heard, Maria McCloskey recently became Executive Director at Irish Rule of Law International. Following her appointment last December, she kindly agreed to answer a few questions for us.

On this month’s show, we discuss how principles related to the rule of law will be the primary drivers in the shift towards cleaner technologies and a healthier environment, in a lively conversation with Irish professor, Raphael Heffron.

It’s been dubbed litigation terrorism - investor state dispute settlement clauses or ISDS mechanisms – and on this month’s show, we talk about it with Stéphanie Caligara, a French qualified lawyer and consultant with the Global Legal Action Network.

The EU Commission, the EU Parliament and the EU Council agree to prevent environmental harm through criminal law.

Our guest on Horsehair Wigs this month is Maud Sarliève, Human Rights and International Criminal Lawyer advocating for creative legal thinking to mitigate climate change and protect the environment. Maud explains ecocide, a newly proposed international crime.

On our show this month, we speak to Gearóid Ó Cuinn, who teaches transnational human rights litigation at the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway and who is head of the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN). 

In the latest in our series, profiling Irish and Northern Irish lawyers and jurists who have worked abroad, or are working abroad, we spoke with Una Wright, an environmental lawyer, who grew up in Ballina in County Mayo. Una works as a Lawyer with the Departmental Solicitor’s Office (DSO) in Northern Ireland, advising the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), particularly on Brexit related matters. Una has been working in the environmental field for 9 years after returning to education to study for a masters in environmental law and sustainable development. Prior to this, she worked in a number of other legal roles in Dublin, New York and Melbourne.

In the latest in our series profiling Irish and Northern Irish Lawyers who have worked abroad, we spoke with Professor Raphael Heffron, who is originally from Cobh in County Cork and works in the energy and climate sector. He is one of the foremost scholars in the world on energy justice, which is about the application of human rights across the energy life-cycle, i.e. applying the rule of law in the energy sector. He has published over 140 publications of different types and is the most cited scholar in energy law worldwide (1340+Scopus). Professor Heffron has also received an EU Jean Monnet Professorship and is the youngest ever to receive it twice (in 2016 and 2019); it is one of the highest awards for non-science academics in the EU. He is also elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh Young Academy of Scotland in 2018.