The 2025 Robin Cooke Lecture
The Faculty of Law was honoured to have Dr Síofra O'Leary, former Judge and President of the European Court of Human Rights, deliver the Robin Cooke lecture.
Dr O'Leary's lecture, Climate change and courts: role, limits and potential, explored the response of European Court of Human Rights and other European courts and international tribunals to climate change litigation. She discussed the similarities and differences of the approach of courts in the last year and a half, and the limits to the judicial role in the field of climate change.
She then reflected on the reaction of courts in common law jurisdictions and beyond to developments in European and international law as a result of climate change litigation.
She noted the impact the political landscape has on current climate change litigation.
Courts, national and international, are faced with climate change litigation at a time when the relevant science is ever clearer, but the political context in which they work is ever more fraught.
Dr Síofra O'Leary
Dr O'Leary is a Hauser/Remarque Global Fellow at New York University. She is also a Full Adjunct Professor at University College Dublin and a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe (Bruges) and Instituto de Empresa in Madrid. While at the European Court she served as President of Section V, Vice-President and as the Court’s 17th President, the first woman to be elected to this position.
The Robin Cooke lecture is given in honour of the late Lord Cooke of Thorndon, a Law School alumnus who is widely considered New Zealand’s most eminent jurist. He is the only New Zealand judge to have sat in the House of Lords of the United Kingdom.
The Faculty of Law would like to extend our deepest appreciation to the Cooke family for their generous support of this longstanding and highly valued lecture.
Dr O'Leary said the opportunity to deliver the Robin Cooke lecture was a “tremendous honour.”
“It has been a real pleasure to be introduced to New Zealanders and to New Zealand this week, and it is a place where I discovered real manaakitanga.”