Lisa Benjamin

Pronouns

She/Her

Biography

Dr. Lisa Benjamin is an Associate Professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland Oregon. She completed her PhD at the University of Leicester in 2017, and received the Doctoral Honors Award in 2018. In 2018, Lisa was a Global Leaders Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, and was a visiting assistant professor at Penn State Law School, where she taught Business Associations and Energy Law. In 2019, she was a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University. In 2021 she won the Huffman Award for outstanding faculty scholarship, in 2022 she won the Leo Levenson Award for excellence in teaching, and was also awarded the 2022-2023 Pace Haub Environmental Law Distinguished Junior Scholar Award.

Her research focuses on climate justice and climate risk, and how these issues intersect with energy law and administrative law. She has written a book and several articles and book chapters on non-state actors and climate risk, as well as energy and climate justice in developing countries, including small island developing states. She was the legal advisor to The Bahamas during the UNFCCC Paris Agreement negotiations.

Lisa is the Vice Chair of the UNFCCC Compliance Committee (Facilitative Branch), a director of Verde PDX (an environmental justice NGO), co-Chair of the Climate Accountability working group of the Climate Social Science Network, and a member of the Expert Peer Review Group in the Race to Zero campaign (a UN-backed global campaign to rally leadership and support from businesses, cities, regions, investors for a healthy, resilient, zero carbon recovery). She has been quoted in Bloomberg Law, The Financial Times, and made appearances on Velshi on MSNBC, and the BBC World Service.

Specialty Areas and Course Descriptions

• Climate Change: International
• Energy Resources: Law & Policy
• Environmental Justice
• Administrative Law

Academic Credentials

Lisa received her BA from McGill University, her LL.B. from University College London, her LLM from University of London and her PhD from the University of Leicester.

Bibliography

Books

‘Companies and Climate Change: Theory and Law in the United Kingdom’ (CUP: 2021) https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/companies-and-climate-change/0B9EB30839E7501130538E4A7FCE8640

Articles

‘Racial capitalism and climate change: colonialism and climate law and policy in the Commonwealth’ Wisconsin International Law Journal (forthcoming, 2024) Special Issue on Racial Capitalism (invited submission).

Alexandra Guillot (2024) ‘National Report: the United States – Corporate Climate Litigation’ for British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Global Perspectives on Corporate Climate Legal Tactics.

‘EVs as EJ?’ Harvard Environmental Law Review, 47(2) (2023) 347-405 https://journals.law.harvard.edu/elr/wp-content/uploads/sites/79/2024/01/HELR-Vol.-47.2-Benjamin.pdf

Thomas, A. (2023) ‘The unvirtuous cycle of loss and damage: addressing systemic impacts of climate change in small islands from a vulnerability perspective’ Review of European, Comparative and International Environmental Law (co-editor of special issue focusing on loss and damage in vulnerable states).

Churchill, R., Davenport, T., Klerk, B., Payne, C., Voigt, C., (2023) International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s submission to the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea for an advisory opinion on state obligations on climate change, submitted by the Commission of Small Island States.

Co-author, (forthcoming, 2024), International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s submission to the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on state obligations on climate change, submitted by the Commission of Small Island States.

Akriti Bhargava et al. ‘Climate-washing litigation: legal liability for misleading climate communications’ (2022, CSSN Research Report) https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/publication/climate-washing-litigation-legal-liability-for-misleading-climate-communications/

‘The SEC and Climate Risk’ (40(1) UCLA Journal of Environmental Law and Policy 1 (2022) https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8vd7x1k3

‘Group Companies and Climate Justice’ (Current Legal Problems, volume 74, issue 1, pp. 235-267, 2021) https://academic.oup.com/clp/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/clp/cuab007/6381521?redirectedFrom=fulltext

‘From Marrakesh to Glasgow: Looking Backwards to Move Forward on Emissions Trading’ (with David Wirth) (Climate Law, special issue on Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, 2021) https://brill.com/view/journals/clla/11/3-4/article-p245_245.xml

‘Mapping Human Rights Based Climate Litigation in Canada’ (with Sara Seck) (Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 2022) https://www.elgaronline.com/view/journals/jhre/13/1/article-p178.xml

‘The Road To Paris Runs Through Delaware: Climate Litigation and Directors’ Duties’ Utah Law Review (2020) 2(1) Utah Law Review, 313-382.
https://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr/vol2020/iss2/1/

‘Renewable Energy and Trade: Meeting the Paris Agreement’s Goals with a Two-Step Jurisprudential Advance’ Minnesota Journal of Law Science & Technology (2021) 2(1) 1-82. https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mjlst/vol22/iss1/3/

‘Gender and Climate Justice – implications for policy formation in the Caribbean region’ Loyola Law Review 66 (2021) 329-369 (with A Thomas).

‘Climate Litigation in the Global South: filling in gaps’ (with Joana Setzer) AJIL Unbound 114 (2020) 56-60. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2020.6

‘Climate Litigation in the Global South: constraints and innovations’ (with Joana Setzer), Transnational Environmental Law 9(1) 2020, 77-101.doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S2047102519000268

‘Non-economic loss and damage: lessons from displacement in the Caribbean’ (2019) Climate Policy (with Adelle Thomas) doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2019.1640105

‘Corporate governance and climate change: Smoothing temporal dissonance to a phased approach’ Business Law Review 40(4) (2019) 146-160 (with Stelios Andreadakis).

‘Institutional Investors in the UK and “Carbon-Major” Companies: Private Environmental Governance Post-Paris’ George Washington Journal of Energy & Environmental Law. 9(1) (2018) 5-20.

‘The Duty of Due Consideration in the Anthropocene: Climate Risk and English Directorial Duties’ Carbon and Climate Law Review 11(2) (2017) 90-99.

 ‘An Islands’ COP? Loss and Damage at COP 23’ Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law (2018) https://doi.org/10.1111/reel.12255 (with Adelle Thomas and Rueanna Haynes)

‘Policies and Mechanisms to Address Climate-Induced Migration and Displacement in Pacific and Caribbean Small Island Developing States’ International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, Special Issue, Climate Change, Migration and Displacement of Populations (2017) https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCCSM-03-2017-0055 (with Adelle Thomas).

‘Management of Loss and Damage in small island developing states: Implications of a 1.5°C or warmer world’ Regional Environmental Change, Special Issue, 1.5°C and Small Island Developing States (2017) DOI 10.1007/s10113-017-1184-7 (with Adelle Thomas).

‘The Responsibilities of Carbon Major Companies: Are They (and Is the Law) Doing Enough? Transnational Environmental Law 5(2) (2016) 353-378.

‘1.5 °C to stay alive? AOSIS and the long-term temperature goal in the Paris Agreement’ IUCN Academy of Environmental Law eJournal 7, (2016) 122-129 (with Adelle Thomas).

Shorter Publications:

‘Corporate Climate Responsibility Ramps Up’ by Lisa Benjamin, Fifteen Eighty Four 12 July 2021:http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2021/07/corporate-climate-responsibility-ramps-up-by-lisa-benjamin/

Book review, Principles on Climate Obligations of Enterprises (2nd Ed) by the Expert Group on Global Climate Change. Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law (2021): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108/02646811.2021.1940486

Book review, Climate Change and the Voiceless- Protecting Future Generations, Wildlife, and Natural Resources, by Randall S. Abate. Transnational Environmental Law 9(2) (2020) 379-384

‘Climate Change, Poverty and Human Rights: An Emergency Without Precedent’ by Lisa Benjamin, Meinhard Doelle and Sara Seck, The Conversation, September 4th, 2019: Climate change, Poverty and Human Rights: An Emergency Without Precedent

‘Directors are in the Crosshairs of Corporate Climate Litigation’ by Lisa Benjamin, The Conversation, July 8th, 2019: Directors are in the Crosshairs of Corporate Climate Litigation