Caroline Foster

Professor Foster’s research and writing in 2023 has dealt among other matters with the UN General Assembly’s request to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an Advisory Opinion on climate change. She has assisted the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in writing its submissions to the Court, as well as to the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). Caroline is hopeful that the Advisory Opinions will advance international legal thinking on the need to have due regard for future generations, and this is the topic on which her research has focussed most recently.

Caroline has addressed the role and practice of international courts and tribunals throughout her career. Her two monographs with Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press examined international courts’ and tribunals’ procedures and reasoning and their adjudicatory function in disputes on the environment and human health. The former, Science and the Precautionary Principle in International Courts and Tribunals: Expert Evidence, Burden of Proof and Finality was cited in the ICJ by Judges Simma and Al-Khasawneh. The latter, Global Regulatory Standards in Environmental and Health Disputes: Regulatory Coherence, Due Regard, and Due Diligence, was funded by a Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Grant and nominated for the European Society of International Law monograph prize in 2022.

In her capacity as Director of the New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law (NZCEL), Professor Foster initiated and co-hosted with the Legal Research Foundation a conference on Climate Litigation in Comparative Contexts in Auckland in May 2023. Caroline’s forthcoming team projects deal with facilitative non-compliance mechanisms in international law and with the trade and the sustainability agenda. Her longer term research interests include a range of environmental and oceans issues as well as Antarctic law and policy, and international legal issues concerning the status of public and private actors respectively in these domains, together with the intersection of human rights and the environment.

Caroline welcomes research proposals from qualified applicants at Honours, Masters and Doctoral level in all the areas above.