Hugh Macleod

Hugh Macleod is a barrister, law lecturer and journalist with a Master’s in International Human Rights Law from Oxford University.

 

Hugh spent a decade in the Middle East as a foreign correspondent and filmmaker, reporting on humanitarian and political crises in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, and produced award-winning coverage of the Syrian uprising and crackdown. Now living in Copenhagen, Hugh’s practice focuses on the public understanding of human rights law, particularly as it relates to international development, the rule of law, and climate change liability. 

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His recent research and writing includes:

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'Covid-19 and the Media: A Pandemic of Paradoxes', Comprehensive human rights-based analysis and reporting on the impact of the pandemic on public interest media, for Denmark's International Media Support.

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The report was launched, and I presented its main findings, at the opening of the academic conference at the UN's World Press Freedom Day.

 

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, amid collapsing revenues and a rising torrent of online misinformation and gender-based hate speech, States have a human rights-based obligation to ensure the survival of public interest media, most urgently through subsidies that can be funded by proper taxation of multinational tech companies. 

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That is the leading conclusion of a new report by International Media Support (IMS), which assesses the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the operation of the global media sector. Drawing on reports from over 30 IMS partners worldwide, on surveys conducted by international journalism watchdogs through 2020, and supported by in-depth interviews with eight journalists working in public interest media in select IMS partner countries, this report provides comprehensive insight into what it terms ‘a pandemic of paradoxes’.

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Read the full report here, and a summary here.

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'Time to Make Climate Change Illegal', Opinion article for Belgian NGO Klimaatzaak.

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Is climate change legal? Despite decades of debate at the UN, millions marching in protests across the globe, and record breaking heat waves and ice melts, almost no government in the world has yet set itself a legally binding target for greenhouse gas emissions enforceable in court by citizens today. Yet we, and a growing number of lawyers, scholars, and citizens bringing cases to court – most often children understandably distressed by the mess they‘re going to inherit – believe the time has come to state clearly what must be true: catastrophic climate change is illegal.

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Catastrophic climate change will harm fundamental rights and is irreversible. It can only be avoided now and cannot be avoided in the future. It is illegal, and courts exist to control illegality of state action and uphold the public interest and human rights.

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Read more here. 

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'Denmark Leads in the International Fight Against Torture', Opinion article for Secretary General of the IRCT.

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Justice is healing

 

For those who survived, and those tens of thousands of Syrian men, women and children whose torture in the Assad regime’s underground dungeons was followed by their execution, Germany’s successful prosecution and conviction last month of one perpetrator of those crimes is a step towards healing the wound of impunity.

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IRCT torture rehabilitation centres in 76 countries across the world will tell you also that healing is justice; the long-term dedication and support to torture survivors needed to start remedying the grave harms inflicted on their bodies and minds. Here in neighbouring Denmark we have for decades been the global leader in fulfilling that other crucial international obligation owed to survivors of torture: the right to rehabilitation.

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Read more here. 

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'ICJ 2.0: Syria, the New Language of International Criminal Law, and Ensuring Principled Accountability in an Era of Entrepreneurial Justice', Proposal for PhD for Copenhagen University. 

 

A generation on from what its architects hoped would mark a new era of accountability, International Criminal Justice (ICJ) faces a critical juncture. Diplomatic deadlock at the UN Security Council and the jurisdictional limits of the International Criminal Court (ICC) have, to date, guaranteed impunity for state actors in Syria responsible for massive international crimes. Observers fear the ‘justice cascade’ of the first generation of ICJ, marked by special tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, and capped by the establishment of the ICC in 1998, has today faded to a trickle as the world enters the ‘Age of Impunity’.

 

Stepping into the accountability gap on Syria are a new set of actors and a new set of legal, political, and social relationships, competing and complementing each other in their efforts to end the impunity. This new practice of so-called ‘entrepreneurial justice’ is radically different from the first generation of ICJ: in place of UN-approved investigators are private NGOs training defectors to smuggle out vast troves of evidence; in place of eyewitness accounts are endless hours of video footage live streamed to the internet; and in place of the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, an array of lawyers across Europe are now filing charges, invigorating the once forgotten application of universal jurisdiction. This paper identifies and analyses this new language of ‘ICJ 2.0’, evaluating its possibilities and pitfalls, and its implications for the goal of bringing principled accountability to the world’s worst crimes.

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Read more here.

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'Arbitration on Trial: A Verdict on the Use of Arbitration in Investor-State Dispute Settlement', Master's Dissertation for Oxford University.

 

The use of arbitration in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) enables foreign investors to sue host states for alleged breaches of international investment law. But the practise has grown increasingly controversial over the past decade, with respondent states refusing to pay damages, or withdrawing from the system entirely. 

 

ISDS operates as a form of judicial review, adjudicating on the lawfulness of actions taken by the host State’s Government. Its decisions can cost host states billions of dollars of taxpayer’s money, and directly impact on rights of citizens protected under International Human Rights Law (IHRL). Yet IHRL is construed as playing little to no role in ISDS arbitration. Thus, the question this paper seeks to answer is whether the continued use of arbitration in ISDS is justified, or not. 

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Read more here.

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'Proposal for Strategic Litigation to Re-Establish the Public Trust Doctrine in English Common Law', for The Good Law Project. 

 

At a national level 85% of all rivers in England and Wales are polluted. Two years ago, according to the World Wildlife Fund, 40% were polluted. 95% of rivers feeding the Severn are polluted, are not healthy, are, forgive the vulgarity, shitty. Rivers are being used as open sewers.

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Who actually owns the River Severn? Who is responsible for the whole river, as a national asset, a piece of natural capital, from the Cambrian to the Bristol Channel. In medieval times they knew the answer: The King owned all the rivers, and all the seashore, and all the land, and possibly all the air, but not for his exclusive possession, but rather he held those all for all his subjects and promised to keep them free for all, subject to public trust.

 

The public trust doctrine arose in Roman law, and has been called ‘the oldest doctrine of environmental law’.

 

Read more here.

 

 

'The Implications for Climate Change and Human Rights of the Heathrow Third Runway Court of Appeal Ruling', for The Good Law Project.

 

The Court of Appeal’s ruling that the Government’s choice of Heathrow’s third runway was unlawful because it ignored the UK’s commitments to the Paris Agreement is the most significant climate change case in English law to date.

 

It is the first case in which a legal duty to address climate change has been imposed on the UK Government by the judiciary. But although a breakthrough for the judiciary’s approach to climate change policy, the judgment also illustrates the wide discretion courts continue to allow government ministers when balancing pollution against economic gain, a discretion that appears incompatible with meeting climate change targets or restoring the UK’s biodiversity.

 

Read more here.

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'Duty to Care? Prospects for Climate Change Liability in English Courts', Graduate Diploma research paper for Nottingham Law School.

 

Who is responsible for the harms of climate change, now and as they worsen into the future? A primary school pupil would likely find the correct answer: Those who polluted the most, and those who had the power to stop them, but didn’t.

 

Can the law clarify liability as succinctly?

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Read more here.

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'Climate Change is an Abuse of Power', Opinion article.

 

It should be illegal for governments to preside over catastrophic climate change. But it’s not. Here’s how to take back control.

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Read more here. 

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