Dhvani Mehta

DPhil Law

Dhvani completed her Bachelors in Law from the University of Mumbai in 2009, after which she read for the BCL and the M.Phil degrees at the University of Oxford. She is currently a D.Phil candidate under the supervision of Dr Liz Fisher. Her M.Phil thesis ;examined the polarising academic scholarship on cost-benefit analysis in environmental regulation in the US, and developed an intersecting framework of 'balancing' and 'absolutism' through which to better understand environmental law. It also studied the US Clean Water Act and related cases, and suggested that legislation, rather than academic scholarship, better captured this framework, ultimately arguing for a greater need to refocus attention on environmental statutes.Her doctoral thesis builds on this argument about the importance of legislation in the context of forest laws in India. Environmental law in India is messy and fragmented, but scholarship tends to focus only on the case law and the judicial activism of the Indian Supreme Court. Her thesis attempts a mapping exercise of the many statutes, rules and regulations that occupy the field. Through this exercise, she hopes to argue that legislation plays an important role in the development of new environmental legal concepts, and that we need to devote attention to the design of better statutory instruments.

Dhvani has been editor of the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal and is currently convenor of the Environmental Law Discussion Group. She has also been actively involved with Oxford Pro Bono Publico since 2010, serving as Co-Chair and Chair of its executive committee, and supervising research projects on sexual harassment, the right to food, the death penalty and public participation in legislative processes.