Climate Litigation

258 posts

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights Recognizes a Right to a Healthy Environment in Recent Advisory Opinion

By Jose Felix Pinto-Bazurco* Since its founding in 1979, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (the Court) has issued 24 advisory opinions. Although it has previously recognized the existence of a relationship between environmental protection and the enjoyment of other human rights, it has done so only in relation to […]

U.S. Climate Change Litigation in the Age of Trump: Year One—A New Sabin Center Working Paper

By Dena Adler Donald Trump claims to have delivered on deregulation in his first year as President. While independent reporting questions the veracity of his assertions, climate change is one arena where the Trump Administration’s regulatory rollbacks have been both visible and real. The Administration has delayed and initiated the […]

February 2018 Updates to the Climate Case Charts

Each month, Arnold & Porter and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law collect and summarize developments in climate-related litigation, which we also add to our U.S. and non-U.S. climate litigation charts.  If you know of any cases we have missed, please email us at columbiaclimate at gmail dot com. HERE ARE THE ADDITIONS […]

Santa Cruz Joins Other Municipalities Suing Fossil Fuel Companies for Damages Caused by Climate Change

By Jessica Wentz On December 20, the City of Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz County filed separate lawsuits in California Superior Court seeking to hold 29 fossil fuel companies accountable for their contribution to climate change. In doing so, they joined five other Californian local governments that have filed similar […]

Irish High Court Recognizes a Right to an Environment, But Finds that Environmental Group Lacks Standing to Make Climate Change Claims in Airport Runway Case

By Dena Adler On November 21, 2017, the High Court of Ireland blocked a climate change case concerning construction of a new airport runway from moving forward, but made a groundbreaking decision in recognizing “a personal constitutional right to an environment” for the first time. In Friends of the Irish […]

The Huaraz Case (Lluiya v. RWE) – German Court opens Recourse to Climate Law Suit against Big CO2-Emitter

By Dr. Will Frank [1] Editor’s note: Lluiya v. RWE, now pending in the courts of Germany, is a noteworthy litigation concerning the potential liability of greenhouse gas emitters for the damages caused by climate change.  The blog below presents an analysis of the case from the point of view of a […]

Can Fossil Fuel Companies Be Held Liable for Climate Change?

by Justin Gundlach We know that burning fossil fuels is the main cause of anthropogenic climate change, and that climate change is the source of adverse impacts on communities and even regional and national economies. Those impacts—sometimes irksome, sometimes devastating—are increasingly obvious, and the causal mechanisms that connect them to […]