Lancaster University Law School
Lecturer in Law
Human rights · Environmental law · Legal theory · Public law · Tort law
Jeremy Letwin is a Lecturer in Law at Lancaster University Law School and a member of its Human Rights and Global Vulnerabilities research group. His work spans human rights, environmental law, legal theory, public law and tort law.
He completed his PhD at King’s College London with a thesis entitled ‘A Theory of the Moral Foundations of the European Convention on Human Rights’. Before joining Lancaster in September 2023, he was judicial assistant to the Senior President of Tribunals in the Court of Appeal and a Visiting Lecturer at King’s. He holds an LLM from UCL and an LLB from King’s, and was called to the Bar at Middle Temple.
Outside work he is a rock climber, ice climber, alpinist and runner, and a member of the Alpine Club.
His current research concerns three themes:
He welcomes PhD proposals in human rights law, environmental law, public law, jurisprudence and legal theory, and moral and political theory.
2026
What is Strasbourg’s Theory of Environmental Human Rights?
(2026) Journal of Environmental Law eqag032 Open access
Argues that the European Court of Human Rights’ environmental case law, particularly its recent judgments, is moving from a ‘quasi standalone rights’ model towards recognising a limited standalone right to a safe and healthy environment.
2025
The Limits of Climate Change Litigation in the European Court of Human Rights
(2025) 6 European Convention on Human Rights Law Review 443
Identifies four limits, grounded in the Court’s earlier environmental case law, on how far the Strasbourg Court is likely to go in climate change cases after KlimaSeniorinnen.
2023
Proportionality, Stringency and Utility in the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights
(2023) 23 Human Rights Law Review ngad014
Develops an indirect utilitarian account of proportionality in the Strasbourg case law, explaining why Convention rights resist trade-offs and how the public interest weighed against them should be understood.
Strasbourg’s Views on the Modern Mirror Principle: Shattering the Mirror?
[2023] Public Law 628
Argues that the European Court of Human Rights favours a looser relationship between national courts and its case law than the ‘mirror principle’ developed by the UK courts.
2022
Hard Cases, Bad Law: How Philosophising Could Help the ECtHR to Achieve Completeness and Coherence
[2022] European Human Rights Law Review 587
Identifies judgments in which the Strasbourg Court fell short of completeness or coherence, and argues that philosophical argument about the Convention, rather than a merely pragmatic fix, was needed to do better.
A Utilitarian Account of Article 3 ECHR
(2022) 3 European Convention on Human Rights Law Review 350
Develops a utilitarian account of the moral rights underlying Article 3 ECHR and applies it to central features of the Court’s Article 3 case law.
2021
Why Completeness and Coherence Matter for the European Court of Human Rights
(2021) 2 European Convention on Human Rights Law Review 119
Sets out a theory of how complete and coherent the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights ought to be, as a basis for more principled criticism of its case law.
2025
Unforeseeably Making Matters Worse: An Issue of Notional or Factual Duty?
(2025) 84 Cambridge Law Journal 23with Fraser Dixon
Asks whether, in Tindall v Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police, the police’s inability to foresee that they had made matters worse removed any duty of care or merely defeated a prima facie duty.
2023
A Grand Unified Theory for the “Close Connection Test” in Vicarious Liability Cases
(2023) 82 Cambridge Law Journal 388with William Peck
2022
Efobi v Royal Mail Group: Much Ado About Nothing?
(2022) 85 Modern Law Review 1504with Josephine Rendall-Neal
Argues that the Supreme Court’s ruling on the burden of proof in discrimination claims turned on a normative question that the Court did not confront.
2022
Mill on Justice
in Mortimer Sellers and Stephan Kirste (eds), Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (Springer 2022)
2024
Klimaseniorinnen: The Innovative and the Orthodox
(EJIL:Talk!, 17 April 2024)
Examines Judge Eicke’s dissenting claim that the majority in KlimaSeniorinnen took three innovative steps beyond the proper limits of evolutive interpretation.
2023
The Bill of Rights Bill and the Modern Mirror Principle
(UK Constitutional Law Association, 14 March 2023)
Considers how far clause 3 of the Bill of Rights Bill would have changed the ‘modern mirror principle’ developed under section 2 of the Human Rights Act 1998.
2026
Theorising the New Age of Environmental Human Rights Law
Conference co-convened with James Summers, Lancaster Castle, 17–18 September 2026
2025
What is Strasbourg’s Theory of Environmental Rights?
Northern UK Human Rights Network work-in-progress session, University of Edinburgh, 7 May 2025
He convenes the Tort Law module and teaches environmental human rights law.
He is also Head of Mooting at Lancaster University Law School.
Law School
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YN
United Kingdom
For email, see the Lancaster University staff profile.