Lawyers are pursuing a broad range of cases in an effort to address climate change. Given the scope and complexity of climate change (and the scale of the solutions it requires), this diversity is not surprising. But it amplifies a key question in any strategic litigation: how that litigation...

Given the urgent need to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and concern regarding insufficient climate action and ambition across the globe, NGOs and individuals are increasingly turning to the courts to force States, public authorities, and private entities to increase their climate...

Given the urgent need to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and concern regarding insufficient climate action and ambition across the globe, NGOs and individuals are increasingly turning to the courts to force States, public authorities, and private entities to increase their climate...

Switzerland has undertaken a commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Throughout 2020 and 2021, the Swiss Federal Government and civil society were working towards achieving this target...

On 9 October 2018, the Hague Court of Appeal confirmed the first instance judgement rendered in the world-famous Urgenda case: the Dutch State commits a tort by setting a goal for greenhouse gasses emissions reduction of only 20% by the end of 2020, compared to 1990 levels. The State is ordered...

‘…the possibility of damages for those whose interests Urgenda represents, including current and future generations of Dutch nationals, is so great and concrete that given its duty of care, the state must make an adequate contribution, greater than its current contribution, to prevent...

The present paper focuses on the emerging human rights-based climate change litigation legal movement and proposes an ECHR law-based litigation route that can be used, along with European and national constitutional law arguments, in national courts of states that participate in the ECHR system,...

The crime of ‘ecocide’ has been discussed for almost 50 years and is of increasing relevance. Starting as scientific and biological debates during the Vietnam War, ecocide arguments became foremost political and then juridical. Recently in 2021, the ‘Stop Ecocide Foundation’ proposed to...

“Extreme” weather has become the new normal. What were previously considered to be inexplicable and unpredictable “acts of God” can no longer reasonably be said to be so. They are acts of man. The established doctrine of contractual impracticability rests on the notion that a party may...

In November 2016, just two days after the election of President Donald Trump, the federal district court in Oregon handed down Juliana v. Obama, a remarkable decision that refused to dismiss a lawsuit brought by youth plaintiffs who claimed that federal government's fossil fuel policies over the...