From Ecophany to Burnout? An Anthropologist’s Reflections on Two Years of Participating in Council-Citizen Climate Governance in Eastbourne

In July 2019, Eastbourne Borough Council declared a climate emergency and committed to making Eastbourne carbon neutral by 2030. In order to achieve this, citizens together with Council created a unique model of council-citizen collaborative climate governance, the Eastbourne Eco Action Network (EAN). EAN’s main strategy has been the setting up of targeted working groups, each bringing together Councillors, engaged citizens and providers, and each tackling a specific area of climate action through a combination of infrastructure, institutional and behavioural changes. As an environmental anthropologist living in Eastbourne, I was involved in this process right from the beginning, having had my own ‘ecophany’—the realisation that the climate emergency required urgent action—in February 2019. Two years and one pandemic later, in this paper I reflect on the overall experiences and challenges of EAN’s and Eastbourne Borough Council’s work towards town-wide carbon neutrality to date, discussing possible factors (structural and other) determining varying successes and failures. At the same time, this paper provides an auto-ethnographic account of what ‘engaged anthropology’ means in practice, mapping out the real contributions anthropologists can and should make in local climate action, but also reflecting on challenges encountered along the way.

Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale v Islington London Borough Council [1996] 2 AC 669, House of Lords

Essential Cases: Equity & Trusts provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. This case document summarizes the facts and decision in Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale v Islington London Borough Council [1996] 2 AC 669, House of Lords. The document also includes supporting commentary from author Derek Whayman.

Transco plc v Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council [2004] 2 AC 1

Essential Cases: Tort Law provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. This case document summarizes the facts and decision in Transco plc v Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council [2004] 2 AC 1. The document also included supporting commentary from author Craig Purshouse.

19. Actions under the rule of Rylands v Fletcher

This chapter examines the rule from Rylands v Fletcher [1868]. The rule holds that where there has been an escape of a dangerous thing in the course of a non-natural use of land, the occupier of that land is liable for the damage to another caused as a result of the escape, irrespective of fault. The rule today is best understood through a trilogy of cases: Rylands v Fletcher, Cambridge Water Co Ltd v Eastern Counties Leather plc [1994] and Transco v Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council [2004]. The development of the rule has led to an increased overlap with ideas from nuisance and negligence.

COMMENCING A PRIVATE PROSECUTION AND THE GROUNDS FOR DISMISSING A LAY JUDGE FROM HIS FUNCTION

The institution of the participation of the social factor in the justice in Poland has a long and well-established tradition. In accordance with Art. 4 of the Law on the System of Common Courts, citizens take part in administering justice through the participation of lay judges in hearing cases before courts in the first instance. The jurors are elected by the borough councils for a four-year term. Dismissal of a lay judge before the end of his term of office is possible in the cases enumerated in the Act. This article attempts to analyse the issue of the impact of the circumstances of instituting private indictment against a lay judge on the possibility of dismissing a lay judge from his function at the request of the president of the court. The article presents the following problems and issues: is the initiation of a general criminal procedure against a lay judge for an offense prosecuted on a private indictment basis for the dismissal of a lay judge by the municipal council?; Does instituting criminal proceedings against a person for an offense prosecuted by private indictment prevent that person from standing for the post of a common court lay judge? Is a person running for the post of a common court lay judge obliged to disclose in the course of the procedure of electing lay judges (before being elected by the borough council) that there are private criminal proceedings against that person? The findings made by the authors lead to the conclusion that in the event of instituting private criminal proceedings against a lay judge, the provision of Art. 166 § 2 point 3 of the Act on the System of Common Courts does not apply, and the fact of prosecuting a lay judge as a result of bringing a private indictment to a court should not constitute the basis for a motion by the president of the court to the municipal council to dismiss a lay judge from his function.

Transco plc v Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council [2004] 2 AC 1

Essential Cases: Tort Law provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. This case document summarizes the facts and decision in Transco plc v Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council [2004] 2 AC 1. The document also included supporting commentary from author Craig Purshouse.

Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale v Islington London Borough Council [1996] 2 AC 669, House of Lords

Essential Cases: Equity & Trusts provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. This case document summarizes the facts and decision in Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale v Islington London Borough Council [1996] 2 AC 669, House of Lords. The document also includes supporting commentary from author Derek Whayman.

The ‘Range of Reasonable Responses’ Test: A Poor Substitution for the Statutory Language

The ‘range of reasonable responses’ (RORR) test for assessing the fairness of a dismissal under section 98(4) ERA 1996 started life as a mistake and never recovered. Where the statute tells judges a dismissal is unfair if an employer acted ‘unreasonably’, the RORR tells them this refers to a special kind of ‘employer reasonableness’. In a setting where the only question is whether a dismissal is too harsh or not it is senseless to ask anyone, including a judge, to behave as if a dismissal they consider too harsh is nevertheless not too harsh. Yet this is what the RORR has always asked Employment Tribunal judges to do, with predictable results. Because they are told that they may not use their own idea of what counts as reasonable, they have no choice but to assume that ‘employer reasonableness’ tolerates more harshness than ‘reasonableness’. Lady Hale, possibly viewing the matter in the same light, appears to have invited a Supreme Court challenge to the RORR in Reilly v Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council. This article argues that the Supreme Court must do away with the RORR because it artificially makes it harder to succeed in an unfair dismissal claim, it is doctrinally confused, and incremental efforts by the lower courts to resolve these problems within the RORR framework inevitably fail. The answer must involve distinguishing between a ‘standard for decision’ and a ‘standard of review’. The RORR tried to perform both functions by distorting the standard for decision to address standard of review concerns. Recent Supreme Court case law on proportionality, however, has made it clear this is the wrong approach. What the Court should install, in place of the RORR, is (a) a clear standard for decision, not subject to modification over standard of review concerns, and (b) targeted guidance about how tribunals should focus their inquiry and where to give deference to employers.