On 14 October 2026, Professor Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, CISDL Senior Director, Chair in Sustainable Development Law and Policy and law fellow of Lucy Cavendish College at the University of Cambridge, received an honorary doctorate from Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Hungary, delivering an address entitled Courage, Commitment and Community.
Addressing the University Council and distinguished guests, she honoured Judge Professor Dr Marcel Szabó, Hungary’s former Ombudsman for Future Generations and a Constitutional Court judge, whose scholarship and public service have advanced legal protection for generations to come.
“A university … is a promise made to people who do not yet exist,” she reflected, calling for courage to defend those without a voice, commitment to legal promises across generations, and community extending to all beings sharing our planet.”
The lecture builds on longstanding collaboration with Judge Professor Szabó, including the Cambridge University Press volume Intergenerational Justice in Sustainable Development Treaty Implementation. As she highlighted: “Our future has names. Our future has handwriting. Our future has souls. Justice between generations is, in the end, justice for the future generations of all beings.”
His Excellency Judge CG Weeramantry, former Vice President of the International Court of Justice, described sustainable development as “one of the most ancient of ideas in the human heritage”. As Prof Cordonier Segger argued in her lecture, guardianship across generations, and across species, is an inheritance that in these turbulent times, requires urgent attention. It is also, she underscored, “the defining jurisprudential challenge of our century. Our institutions were designed to serve the living, yet the consequences of our choices now reach those who have no vote, no counsel and no standing. Meeting that challenge asks of us courage, commitment and community.”
Her closing invitation captured the occasion’s spirit: “May we all find the courage to speak for those who cannot yet speak; the commitment to keep faith with them across the decades; and the community to do so together.”
She also thanked her father, Professor Sir Martin Segger, and her partner, Professor Dr Dr Markus Gehring, her two sons and her committed circle of colleagues, including in her university and college especially their DemEd Global programme, her Centre for International Sustainable Development Law including the Voices of Future Generations Children’s Initiative, her newly formed Sustainable Development Governance and Law Association, and World Future Council, for their enduring support and leadership for global sustainability and justice.
Read the full lecture.
