Professor Suzanne Kingston delivered the keynote lecture, ‘More Democracy Please? Reflections on the Democratic Turn in European Environmental Enforcement’, which was part of the Environmental Law stream, at the 108th Society of Legal Scholars (SLS) Conference.

The paper critically examined whether the move towards greater involvement of non-State actors in EU environmental governance, epitomised by the Aarhus Convention, is increasing the effectiveness of EU environmental law, and presented some initial findings of the ERC project on this issue.

For the first time in its 108 years, the SLS Annual Conference took place outside of the UK. It moved to the UCD Sutherland School of Law, Dublin in September 2017 under the stewardship of Professor Imelda Maher, Dean of the Sutherland School of Law and President of the Society 2016-2017. The Conference entitled The Diverse Unities of Law attracted over 470 international delegates who presented over 300 papers in 28 subject sections.