Antoine De Spiegeleir
Biography:
Antoine De Spiegeleir is a PhD researcher at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, as well as an Associate Researcher at the UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles in Brussels, Belgium. Antoine's doctoral dissertation relates to the use of storytelling in international adjudication. Prior to his PhD, he worked as a research and teaching assistant at KU Leuven. Antoine studied law and philosophy in Brussels, Leuven, and Zurich, and obtained an LLM from Yale Law School in 2022, where he served as a member of the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic and as a research assistant for the Schell Center for International Human Rights and for the Law, Environment, and Animals Program.
Interview with Antoine:
What’s a climate litigation case or trend that has caught your attention recently, and why?
Like many other commentators, I've been amazed by the subtlety of the European Court of Human Rights' approach in the famous case brought by an association of senior women against Switzerland (KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and others v. Switzerland). The Court's Grand Chamber rendered a lengthy judgment in April last year, and I believe this judgment still has quite a few stories to tell. One aspect of the case that particularly caught my attention was the Court's careful presentation of the role of courts, including itself, in the climate change space. In human rights-based climate change litigation, arguments based on the separation of powers or some variants of the "political question" doctrine are extremely frequent. These arguments force domestic, regional, and international courts to talk about themselves. Their rulings may have much to teach us about self-presentation by courts.
What’s one project or aspect of your work in climate litigation that you're particularly excited about in the next six months?
The abstract answer is that what I love the most about my work in climate litigation is its collective dimension. For a few years now, I've had the chance to meet regularly with experts from all over the globe to discuss all things climate litigation. I always come out of these conversations with new insights, avenues for further research, and even concrete litigation strategies to try out. That's what I look forward to the most in the next six months. If I had to give a more concrete answer, I'd say that I'm currently working on two different climate change-related projects and that I'm particularly excited about one of them, which relates to how international rulings percolate through domestic legal systems.
Is there any specific place in the world that inspires you to continue your line of work in advancing climate justice/action?
Yes: my grandfather's field and vegetable patch in the Belgian countryside. I spent a lot of time playing there as a kid. Just writing about it now, I can smell the greenhouse, the ripening tomatoes, the innumerable lettuces. It was my first and remains my most powerful attachment to nature.