Centre for Climate Law and Sustainability Studies (CLASS)

Our mission

The Centre for Climate Law and Sustainability Studies (CLASS) is an expert research unit based at the Institute of State and Law of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Launched in 2020, our Centre explores the contemporary challenges and problems that climate change poses to law at all levels and contributes to solving them in the Czech Republic. The creation of the research unit has been made possible by the kind support of the Czech Academy of Sciences through a ‘Lumina quaeruntur’ academic award that was granted to our researcher Hana Müllerová to run her 5-year climate law project.

We aim to develop and cultivate the new discipline of climate law in a systematic way in the Czech law scholarship, to present our findings to both a law audience and the public, to develop interdisciplinary collaboration and to establish contacts and cooperation with other climate law research teams in Europe.

Our small research team, the first in the Czech Republic specialised in climate law and sustainability, covers International, European and Czech law. We concentrate especially on:

law instruments of climate mitigation and adaptation;
impacts of climate change on human rights;
development and current trends in climate litigation;
emission trading systems;
legal regulation of energy, technologies and transport;
law criteria for just transition processes to a low-carbon economy;
relations between climate protection and environmental protection;
climate change impacts on international trade and investment,
law aspects of sustainable consumption.

Aiming for excellence and impact in the national and international environment, our Centre provides a platform for expert debate, research and dissemination of knowledge on various climate law topics. Our goal is to produce high-quality and policy-relevant research outcomes targeted at the expert field, the government and the general public; we organise academic conferences and workshops and invite foreign and domestic experts to share their expertise and support interdisciplinary exchange.

At the end of 2022, we published the first collective volume in the Czech language describing the field of climate law (H. Müllerová et al.: Klimatické právo, Prague: Wolters Kluwer, 2022).

We also consider one of our important tasks in the public interest to help assess the current level of implementation of the Czech Republic's climate commitments in legislation and make recommendations for future law-making; we are now focusing, among other things, on the topic of climate laws of European countries as a possible inspiration in case the Czech Republic would also consider preparing a Climate Act in the future. We also closely follow the development of climate litigation in other countries and comment on the steps taken so far in the first Czech climate litigation.

Climate Law Project Fellowship

The Centre for Climate Law and Sustainability Studies invites fellows for unpaid appointments of at least two months. Fellows are invited to participate in the activities of the Centre, to use its research infrastructure and facilities for their own climate law research, to fulfil partial tasks needed for the projects of the Centre and to help organise conferences, seminars or workshops. Joining collaborative publications or events is also welcomed. Strong academic qualifications and a background in environmental, climate or energy law is expected.

Climate responsible climate research

Working on a project with climate as a main topic presents us with a challenge to reduce the negative environmental impact of our own scientific work. Read more about our team's commitments to sustainability.

Stay informed

Besides our website, we share information on the activities of our Centre through the Newsletter and Twitter (in English) as well as on Facebook (mostly in Czech). On our You Tube channel you will find the video recordings of the lectures of our guests within our ‘CLASS online’ series as well as the presentations of our team members, many of them in English.