Description of Event
A significant consequence of the convergence of human rights concepts and climate justice efforts has been the role courts can play to compel government and corporate actors to effectively and sustainably reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Between 2015 and 2021, litigants brought almost 150 civil suits in 30 domestic jurisdictions and eight international judicial or quasi-judicial tribunals for human rights impacts related to climate change. In that context, this article takes a partisan view to argue for a principled yet provocative ‘role morality’ on the part of domestic judges to eschew deference in order to consistently adjudicate private and public law claims aimed at confronting an inevitably inhabitable planet. Climate change litigation requires judges to step outside their historically-confined role as interpreters of existing law. Judiciaries that hear climate-related claims would be well-served to adopt a Dworkinian rights-based rule of law—one that accords with elements of Habermas’s co-originality thesis. This expansive adjudicative scope would necessitate consideration of the ‘rulebook’ of existing doctrines, albeit alongside the most morally upright position that intends to respond to the urgency and dire consequences that climate change poses. This article attempts to nudge along current separations of powers debates, particularly when it comes to climate litigation, such that scholars and practitioners have to ask why judges are not the appropriate vessels to hold institutional actors to account for climate-related impacts.
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