LL4GD      Half Unit
International Energy Law

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

International energy law has become a vital aspect of legal training for students who aspire to a career in international law, dispute settlement, or any area of practice or policy that addresses the regulation of energy transactions, whether domestic or cross-border. This course presents energy as a core object of public international law, reflecting the transformation of energy law from a narrow subfield concerning oil and gas transactions into a general survey of how international law progressively regulates governmental and commercial decisions over energy in its manifold forms, including renewable energy and critical minerals underpinning the energy transition.

Seminars will cover the history, political economy, and sources of international energy law, focusing on the allocation of entitlements over natural resources based on territorial sovereignty and the law of the sea; the protection of energy transactions under investment treaties and trade agreements; the mitigation of negative externalities under environmental and human rights law; energy dependence and resource exploitation in the law of occupation and armed conflict; and the international settlement of energy disputes. In this way, the course identifies opportunities for deeper integration of environmental protection and the rights of non-state actors in the international organisation of energy transactions, in the face of possible fragmentation through geopolitical conflict and uneven implementation of obligations in respect of climate change.

2 hours of seminars in the Spring Term.
20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the AT.

In addition to select cases, instruments, and other materials on energy from general works across the applicable areas of international law, this course will draw on several focused studies, including:

• Azaria, Treaties on Transit of Energy via Pipelines and Countermeasures (2015);
• Boute, Energy Dependence and Supply Security: Energy Law in the New Geopolitical Reality (2023);
• Christophers, ‘Fossilized Capital: Price and Profit in the Energy Transition’ 27 NPE 146;
• Cameron, International Energy Investment Law: The Pursuit of Stability (2022);
• Dam-de Jong, The International Law and Governance of Natural Resources in Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations (2015);
• Hailes and Viñuales, ‘The Energy Transition at a Critical Juncture’ (2023) 26 JIEL 627;
• Ipp and Magnusson (eds), Investment Arbitration and Climate Change (2024);
• Marhold, Energy in International Trade Law: Concepts, Regulation, and Changing Markets (2021);
• Viñuales, The International Law of Energy (2022).

Exam (100%), duration: 150 Minutes in the Spring exam period