I have been granted a Royal Society of Edinburgh Arts and Humanities Small Research Grant for a 2 month comparative law research trip to Louisiana from March to May 2018. Louisiana is chosen for comparison as, like Scotland, it is a Mixed Legal System, this being a legal system which is a combination of Roman law and English law influences. Louisiana is also in the process of drafting a new Louisiana Water Code and events like Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (see picture) and the catastrophic flooding of August 2016 are forcing policy makers to consider how to future-proof this new law in the context of increasingly frequent extreme weather events. The goal of the comparative research undertaken in the Project will be to identify and evaluate how social, environmental and economic factors are balanced in the law reform process. Following this trip, I will then conduct knowledge exchange events with stakeholders from a broad range of policy, industry and scientific backgrounds working in the field of water in Scotland. 

The publications and outputs from this trip will be published on this website, so watch this space for future updates! 

First published: 11 December 2017

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