sustainability

12 Georgia Law students learn about comparative environmental law and sustainability during 2026 Global Governance Summer School

12 students from the University of Georgia School of Law participated in the 2026 Global Governance Summer School, operated in partnership with KU Leuven’s Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and administered by the Dean Rusk International Law Center. GGSS continues a decades-long tradition of international study in Brussels for Georgia Law students started by the Charles H. Kirbo Professor of International law Gabriel Wilner. Led this year by Georgia Law Professor Cathy Clutter, the program took place during the final two weeks of May and examined global governance through the lens of comparative environmental law and sustainability in three locations: Brussels, Belgium; Leuven, Belgium; and The Hague, Netherlands.

Brussels, Belgium

After arriving in Brussels, students started out with a walking tour of the city. Along the way, students were able to see a number of famous landmarks, including Les Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert, the Cathédrale des Saints-Michel-et-Gudule, the Mont des Arts, Bourse Beurs, the Manneken Pis, and the Grand Place. The group learned about how the unique history of Brussels led to the city’s current position as the primary political, administrative, and legislative heart of the European Union.

The academic component of the program in Brussels included a number of site visits and briefings, including:

Leuven, Belgium

After Brussels, students traveled to Leuven, the home of one of the oldest universities in Europe, KU Leuven and Georgia Law’s institutional partner, the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies.
 
Students began with a walking tour of the city, learning about the history of Leuven and visiting iconic landmarks like Leuven’s medieval city walls, the waterways running through the city, the Oude Markt, the historic town hall, and St. Peter’s Church.
 
Afterwards, students dove into two days of coursework. Professor Cathy Clutter presented lectures about the “triple P bottom line”—people, planet, and profit—examining how they are impacted by sustainability practices and requirements. discussed the topic of environmental justice, using climate migration as a case study. Students considered whether or not environmental inequities should be addressed at the governmental or individual level, and watched several short clips to demonstrate different perspectives and recent news stories related to the topic. Professor Clutter also focused on integrating lessons learned throughout their site visits in Brussels and the program’s readings.
 
On Sunday, students were joined by Georgia law alumnus Daniel “Tripp” Vaughn (J.D. ’25), who participated in Georgia Law’s summer 2023 Global Governance Summer School. Tripp is currently enrolled in the Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree program at KU Leuven and spoke with students about his decision to pursue an LL.M. and experiences as an LL.M. student in Belgium. Afterwards, he joined students for an afternoon at the Oude Markt while answering student questions about his time at KU Leuven.

On Monday and Tuesday, students learned from researchers and faculty within the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies:

  • Dr. Gustavo Gayger Muller, Senior Researcher at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, spoke about the European Union, regional organizations, and global governance
  • Dr. Axel Marx, The Centre’s Deputy Director, addressed the challenge of sustainability, comparing global and EU approaches
  • Dr. Kari Otteburn, postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, presented on EU trade policy and autonomous measures
  • Dr. Philip De Man, Senior Researcher at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, who discussed the law of international organizations and the governance of outer space
  • Prof. Dr. Jan Wouters, Full Professor of International Law and International Organizations, Jean Monnet Chair ad personam EU and Global Governance, and founding Director of the Institute for International Law and of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, delivered a lecture about EU-US relations and the America Europe Fund

The Hague, Netherlands

For the final third of the program, students traveled to The Hague, Netherlands, which is known informally as the judicial capital of the world. The Hague is home to many international courts including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, and more than 150 international organizations.

The academic component of the program in The Hague included a number of site visits and briefings, including:

  • The International Court of Justice (ICJ): students met with Paul Heckler, Associate Legal Officer, who provided us with a brief history of the ICJ, a description of how it functions, and its recent Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change. Liyu Feng, Judicial Fellow, gave students a tour of the interior of the Peace Palace
  • Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA): Luke Connell, Assistant Legal Counsel, spoke to students both about the history of the PCA and its current work in environmental arbitration
  • World Arbitration Update: students attended one of the afternoon panel discussions, “What is the Impact of the ICJ and other International Courts Advisory Opinion on Climate Change Obligations in Energy and Mining Disputes?” This panel focused on the practical consequences of the ICJ’s Climate Change Advisory Opinion, specifically including disputes related to mining, natural resources and energy, at the merits stage
  • Embassy of Brazil in The Hague: students met with Henrique Choer Moraes, Deputy Head of Mission, and Ana Beatriz Schwanck Fernandes, Assistant – Legal Section. Students were able to learn about the Mercosur trade deal from the Brazilian perspective and how sustainability is a consideration in the trade negotiations.
  • International Criminal Court (ICC): students visited the ICC’s courtroom and learned about the ICC’s structure, history, and current work
  • Honorary Consulate of the Republic of Vanuatu in The Hague: Elly van Vliet, the Honorary Consul General of the Republic of Vanuatu in The Hague, gave students a briefing about her work with Vanuatu to advocate for ecocide to be adopted as the fifth international crime under the Rome Statute. She concluded her briefing with a simple yet impactful observation on the value of having passion for what you do: “If you care, you can do a lot.”

On the program’s final full day in The Hague, the students gathered for a canal tour of the city. The tour guide, a retired teacher, gave a wonderful historical overview of the city. He shared anecdotes about a number of industries that relied on the waterways to transport goods—and also to get rid of waste. Environmental laws, policies, and regulations are very much interwoven into the story of The Hague’s development as a major global city.

The group then ended the evening at a local rooftop restaurant for a final meal and to conclude this year’s program. Students organized paper plate awards, recognizing the unique contributions of their peers to the program over the two week study abroad program.

Students have since left The Hague and have begun their summer jobs, many of them abroad through the Center’s Global Externships Overseas initiative. The Center looks forward to seeing how the experience of spending two weeks in Belgium & The Netherlands plays a role in their upcoming academic decisions, their short- and long-term professional journeys, and their personal perceptions of global governance, environmental law, and sustainability.

Georgia Law Professor Christopher Bruner publishes chapter on corporate governance and sustainability incentives

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Christopher Bruner published a chapter titled “Corporate Governance and Sustainability Incentives” in the book Global Corporations and Sustainability: Rethinking Legal and Economic Frameworks (edited by Barnali Choudhury 2025) in November. This chapter was the subject of a presentation by Bruner at conference titled “Addressing the Sustainability Impacts of Corporations” in 2023. The conference was hosted by the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security at the Osgoode Hall Law School (York University) in Toronto, Canada, detailed here.

Bruner is the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and serves as a faculty co-director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center.

Georgia Law Professor Christopher Bruner presents keynote at University of Turin (Italy) symposium   

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Christopher Bruner presented the keynote address for a symposium titled “Sustainability is (Still) Possible! Governing Market Actors for a Safe and Just Space” at the University of Turin (Italy) in September. Bruner’s keynote was titled “Corporate Sustainability and Anti-ESG Backlash” and the symposium was co-sponsored by Turin’s Department of Law and Department of Economics and Statistics. 

Bruner is the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and serves as a faculty co-director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center.

Georgia Law Professor Christopher Bruner publishes chapter on corporate risk and sustainability

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Christopher Bruner published “Business Risk, Capital Markets, and Sustainable Companies” in The Prism of Sustainability: Multidisciplinary Profiles (Editoriale Scientifica, 2025). Edited by Alessio Bartolacelli, Associate Professor of Business Law at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, the volume brings together perspectives on sustainability from a variety of academic fields. 

Bruner’s chapter builds on ideas he presented in 2023 at a conference hosted by the University of Macerata in Italy.

Bruner is the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and serves as a faculty co-director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center.

Georgia Law Professor Christopher Bruner presents on panel discussing sustainability and emerging markets

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Christopher M. Bruner presented on a panel titled “Sustainability and Emerging Markets” at the “Corporate Governance in the Global South” roundtable hosted by George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. The panel was moderated by Rosa Celorio, Associate Dean for International and Comparative Legal Studies and Burnett Family Distinguished Professorial Lecturer in International and Comparative Law and Policy at George Washington University Law School.

Christopher M. Bruner is the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and serves as a faculty co-director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center.

Georgia Law Professor Christopher Bruner’s book featured by “Dare to Know!” podcast

University of Georgia School of Law Christopher M. Bruner was featured by the “Dare to Know!” podcast in March. The episode, titled “Re-Conceptualizing the Corporation: A New Approach,” focused on Bruner’s 2022 Oxford University Press book, The Corporation as Technology: Re-Calibrating Corporate Governance for a Sustainable Future. The interview was conducted by Fabian Corver, a PhD student in philosophy at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Bruner is the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and serves as a faculty co-director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center. His scholarship focuses on corporate law, corporate governance, comparative law and sustainability.

Georgia Law Professor Christopher Bruner presents at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany

University of Georgia School of Law professor Christopher M. Bruner delivered his presentation “A Political Economy of Corporate Sustainability Reform in the United States” at the Sustainability in Corporate Law Conference at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany.

Bruner is the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and serves as a faculty co-director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center. He holds a courtesy appointment at the UGA Terry College of Business. Bruner teaches a range of corporate and transactional subjects, and he has received the School of Law’s C. Ronald Ellington Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Georgia Law professor Christopher Bruner presents working paper at International Law Colloquium

The University of Georgia School of Law’s spring 2025 International Law Colloquium welcomed Professor Christopher Bruner, who presented his working paper, “Sustainable Corporate Governance and Prospects for a US Value Chain Due Diligence Law.” Joshua Barkan, Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Georgia, served as Bruner’s faculty discussant.

Bruner is the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and serves as a faculty co-director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center. Bruner’s scholarship centers around corporate law, corporate governance, comparative law and sustainability.

Below is an abstract of Bruner’s working paper:

Laws requiring multinational companies to undertake due diligence to detect, prevent, and mitigate human rights and environmental abuses in their value chains have proliferated across Europe, and the European Union has adopted a directive to harmonise such national laws. This chapter assesses the prospects for enactment of such a value chain due diligence law in the United States.

Although such laws are often conceptualised as an extension of corporate law, they can just as readily be conceptualised as an extension of trade law – and the latter approach offers real potential to sidestep anti-ESG and anti-sustainability sentiment among the US political right. Packaged as a trade initiative, the prospects for bipartisanship improve because the political left and right can each embrace the effort by reference to policy preferences resonating with their respective bases. To the progressive left, such laws raise labour and environmental standards globally, while to the conservative right, such laws protect domestic industry from unfair foreign competition.

The chapter first examines corporate politics in the United States, discussing how fundamental corporate governance debates revolve around thorny ideological issues that strongly polarise the political left and right, diminishing the prospects for a value chain due diligence law conceptualised as an extension of corporate law. It then examines trade politics in the United States, discussing how framing by reference to trade improves the prospects for a US value chain due diligence law by sidestepping such ideological issues and giving both the political left and right plausible ways to view such a law as a victory for their respective bases. The chapter concludes with discussion of trade-offs raised by these differing modes of legal strategy and institutionalisation, observing that the corporate law approach offers broader reach with weaker enforcement while the trade law approach offers narrower reach with stronger enforcement.

This year, Professor Desirée LeClercq is overseeing the colloquium, which is designed to introduce students to features of international economic law through engagement with scholars in the international legal field. To view the full list of International Law Colloquium speakers, visit our website.

This program is made possible through the Kirbo Trust Endowed Faculty Enhancement Fund and the Talmadge Law Faculty Fund.

Georgia Law Professor Christopher Bruner presents on the politics of corporate sustainability reform

University of Georgia School of Law professor Christopher M. Bruner presented “A Political Economy of Corporate Sustainability Reform in the United States” at an online event hosted by the University of Oslo Faculty of Law in October.  The event was organized by Oslo’s Sustainability Law research group and convened by Professor Beate Sjåfjell.

Below is an abstract of the presentation:

Conservative backlash against sustainability initiatives and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment policies has been particularly intense in the United States – to the point that these issues have become mired in the broader ‘culture wars’ that increasingly characterize American public life and permeate policymaking. Today, initiatives styled as corporate sustainability or ESG are often rejected outright by conservative federal and state actors opposed to intrusion of what they regard as ‘woke’ progressive policies into economic law. In response, A Political Economy of Corporate Sustainability Reform in the United States tackles two related challenges in the US context – (1) how to advance first-best corporate governance reforms in the long-term, and (2) how to advance second-best alternatives in the near-term.

Christopher M. Bruner is the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and serves as a faculty co-director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center.

Georgia Law Professor Desirée LeClercq publishes chapter in Oxford University Press book

Assistant Professor Desirée LeClercq published “Enforcing International Sustainability Standards on International and National Platforms” in The Sustainability Revolution in International Trade Agreements (G. Vidigal and K. Claussen, eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2024).

Below is a description of the book:

Once seen as aspirational and relatively innocuous, ‘sustainability’ or ‘sustainable development’ provisions are now changing the face of international trade agreements. The Sustainability Revolution in International Trade Agreements gathers fundamental, first-hand analyses of these novel commitments across dozens of agreements, considering their legal, political, and economic aspects.

Drawing on perspectives from different parts of the world and engaging experts in the law and practice of sustainability provisions, this volume offers a comprehensive assessment of the latest developments and innovations in international trade agreements. It also evaluates the development challenges that sustainability requirements pose for countries with limited resources and capacity, for whom lower labour and environmental regulatory costs have been a competitive asset.

The present volume explores the intersectional aspects of sustainability – such as gender equality, biodiversity, animal welfare, and Indigenous rights – in addition to the more traditional dimensions of sustainability, namely economic development, environmental conservation, and improvement of labour standards.

There is little doubt that a sustainability revolution in global production patterns is needed. Considering the details of its operation – how it can come into being, who will bear the increased production costs, and how decisions on difficult trade-offs will be made – reveals the immense challenges involved in developing a new international law for sustainable trade. Read together, the chapters in this volume outline the contours this emerging legal framework, examine its practical operation, and offer important reflections upon the real extent and the foreseeable consequences of this sustainability revolution in international trade agreements.

Desirée LeClercq joined the University of Georgia School of Law in 2024 as an assistant professor. She teaches International Trade and Workers Rights, International Labor Law, International Law and U.S. Labor Law. She also serves as a faculty co-director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center and as the faculty adviser for the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law.