As climate litigation continues to rise, a pivotal and unresolved legal question emerges in the law of State responsibility: how to allocate responsibility for injuries that result from the cumulative conduct of multiple actors. Climate-related injury derives from the aggregate and diffuse effect of anthropogenic activities, as well as natural […]
Climate Litigation
319 posts
While the impacts of climate change become increasingly challenging, states’ climate action is lagging behind. Activities and movements aiming to prompt more progressive climate actions are increasingly emerging outside of, and bypassing, climate negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement. They include […]
The legal landscape for climate action is undergoing a paradigmatic shift. Whereas the primary focus was once on treaty negotiations and diplomacy, climate advocates are now increasingly turning to the courts. Yet as more rulings are handed down in favor of plaintiffs, important questions arise. Are these decisions driving meaningful […]
The trilogy of climate advisory opinions from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) marks a watershed moment not only for climate litigation but also for understanding the evolving role of Conferences of […]
In the recent Advisory Opinion on States’ Obligations in respect of Climate Change (AO, 2025) various remarks by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) lean into an increasingly “administrative” law turn in international law. Administrative law, particularly in the common law, often focuses on the acceptability of the procedures through […]
As the world faces an escalating triple planetary crisis – climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution – those who step forward to defend the environment are increasingly stigmatized, criminalized, and subjected to violence. Nowhere is this threat more acute than in Latin America, which accounts for nearly 80% of all […]
Among the various legal instruments aimed at protecting human rights in the face of the climate emergency, few require as much interpretative effort as the right to science. Traditionally situated within the realm of programmatic obligations and often associated with promoting technical progress and disseminating scientific information, this right has occupied a […]
The International Court of Justice’s (ICJ’s) advisory opinion on Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change has been celebrated as marking the start of a “new era of climate reparations.” The question of how the ICJ engaged with reparations has already been examined in two other posts in this […]