Recipe for Success?: Lessons for Strategic Climate Litigation from the Sharma , Neubauer , and Shell Cases

The urgency of the global climate problem has prompted an increasing turn to the courts to accelerate action. While still a relatively new phenomenon, “strategic” climate cases have been on the rise since 2015. Litigants in these cases aim to produce ambitious and systemic outcomes. However, with bo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:German law journal Vol. 22; no. 8; pp. 1484 - 1498
Main Authors: Peel, Jacqueline, Markey-Towler, Rebekkah
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Toronto Cambridge University Press 01.12.2021
Subjects:
Ambition
Climate change
Climate science
Comparative analysis
Courts
Environmental policy
Human rights
Imagination
Innovations
Jurisprudence
Law
Litigation
Perceptions
Planning
Prospects
Recipes
Strategic planning
Success
Urgency
Australia
United States > US
Germany
ISSN:2071-8322, 2071-8322
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The urgency of the global climate problem has prompted an increasing turn to the courts to accelerate action. While still a relatively new phenomenon, “strategic” climate cases have been on the rise since 2015. Litigants in these cases aim to produce ambitious and systemic outcomes. However, with both time and resources limited, how might we best discern which cases have the greatest prospects of achieving cut through in the policy and public debate, and accelerating climate action? This Article contributes to developing literature evaluating the “recipe for success” in strategic climate claims. It provides a comparative analysis of three recent, high-profile wins in climate cases from Australia— Sharma —, Germany— Neubauer —, and the Netherlands— Shell —, examining their commonalities to give insight into the ingredients for successful strategic climate litigation. Our analysis shows how the three cases combine careful, strategic planning, with legal imagination and innovation to generate outcomes that heighten their capacity for broader impact. Evaluating the success of these types of prominent climate cases provides important guidance for future case design.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ISSN:2071-8322
2071-8322
DOI:10.1017/glj.2021.83