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Practice Profile

Maria Lee is professor of law at UCL (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/index.shtml). She is a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (www.rcep.org.uk).  Within the faculty, she is a member of the Centre for Law and the Environment, Centre for Ethics and Law and Centre for Law and Governance in Europe.  Maria teaches and supervises students in tort and environmental law and policy.

Maria's main research interests lie in the law and policy of environmental protection. She is particularly interested in the ways we make decisions on risk, especially in areas of high technological complexity and controversy. She concentrates on the governance of decision making, examining the use of expertise, public participation and varied regulatory approaches. She has applied this work in a range of areas, including genetically modified organisms, nuclear energy, nanotechnology and water. Maria's main focus is regulation at EU level, but the relationships between EU, national and international actors are inevitably significant.

Maria's current work examines the borderlines between private law (especially tort) and environmental or  public health regulation. Public law regulation has been the primary legal tool for the protection of public or collective interests in environment and public health for many decades. The private law of tort is frequently however called on to protect individual rights or interests (in eg property, physical integrity, amenity) affected by regulation itself or by the regulated activity. Where these private / individual rights and interests meet collective / public interests, the private law of tort meets regulation.  

Publications

Books

  • EU Regulation of GMOs: Law, Decision-making and New Technology (2008, Edward Elgar)
  • Environmental Protection, Law and Policy: Text and Materials (2007, Cambridge University Press) - co-authored with Jane Holder
  • EU Environmental Law: Challenges, Change and Decision-Making (2005, Hart Publishing)

Articles and chapters in edited collections

  • "Hunter v Canary Wharf." In: Paul Mitchell and Charles Mitchell, Landmark Cases in the Law of Tort (Hart Publishing, 2010)
  • "Beyond Safety? The Broadening Scope of Risk Regulation" in Colm O'Cinneide Current Legal Problems 2009 ( Oxford University Press, 2010)
  • "EU Multi-level Governance of GMOs: Ambiguity and Hierarchy." In: Michael Cardwell and Luc Bodiguel Regulation of GMOs ( Oxford University Press, 2010) - draft available on Committee of the Regions website, http://www.cor.europa.eu/pages/EventTemplate.aspx?view=folder&id=da6bea72-bb09-4bed-aa19-5eca8feb24dd&sm=da6bea72-bb09-4bed-aa19-5eca8feb24dd
  • "Agricultural Biotechnology in the UK: Expanding the Scope of the Debate?" In: Michelle Everson and Ellen Vos, Uncertain Risks Regulated (Routledge, 2009)
  • "New Environmental Liabilities: The Purpose and Scope of the Contaminated Land Regime and the Environmental Liability Directive" 2010 Environmental Law Review forthcoming
  • "Personal Injury, Public Nuisance and Environmental Regulation" 2009 King's Law Journal 129