This article maps the shared legal anatomy of climate and environmental lawsuits, in which plaintiffs claim protection for future generations before domestic or international courts. By closely analyzing the litigation strategies of plaintiffs and the inquiry of courts, the article argues that these proceedings revolve around structurally similar legal standards across domestic and international jurisdictions, which correspond to five normative requirements flowing from the rule of law: namely, respect for human rights, certain quality of law requirements, prohibition of arbitrary exercise of governmental powers, non-discrimination, and access to justice. The cross-jurisdictional analysis shows that courts appear to be increasingly willing to protect future generations against arbitrary treatment by present-day decision makers. The article appraises whether such an intergenerationally sensitive reinterpretation of the rule of law could help to change the short-termist paradigm of environmental and climate law.

Climate change litigation is developing rapidly and pervasively, emerging as a space for legal innovation. Until now, this process has occurred mainly in national courts. The result is a decentralization of the interpretation of human rights relating to climate change. This article argues that such decentralization could, in principle, have a destabilizing impact on claims to the universality of human rights. However, close examination of this litigation shows that a prototype is emerging, certain features of which are becoming ‘hard wired’ through the process of judicial dialogue. By exploring the content of this prototype, its decentralized development, and its self-reinforcing nature, we see a legal space emerging in which environmental human rights sit between the universal and the contextual.

Recent years have seen a sharp increase in the number of cases being brought before national courts addressing the constitutional rights of children and future generations (FG) in the context of environmental protection. These cases have required courts to devote increasing attention to a wide-ranging and complicated array of constitutional rights claims involving the short- and longer-term impacts of environmental harm on children and FG. This article argues that both litigation and judicial efforts in this area have been hampered by the lack of precision of definitions of ‘future generations’ under comparative constitutional and international human rights law, in particular vis-à-vis children. This lack of precision poses a major challenge to both the delineation and enforcement of rights claims in the context of such litigation. After outlining how these cases are being brought and how courts are addressing (or not) the complexities involved in defining children and FG respectively, the article highlights the lack of authoritative definitions of FG in comparative constitutional law – a lacuna that, the author argues, is exacerbated by the ongoing lack of a clear definition of FG in the international human rights law context. The article concludes by identifying key challenges faced by litigators and courts seeking to engage with the rights of children and FG that result from this definitional gap.

Storytelling is essential in climate litigation. The narratives that are told in and around legal cases shape public discourse and our collective imagination regarding the climate crisis. The stories that plaintiffs and their lawyers choose to highlight hold immense power to either reinforce or challenge dominant assumptions and worldviews. This article analyzes how storytelling has been utilized in climate lawsuits, with a particular focus on those that involve future generations. It highlights the need to craft narratives that foreground entanglement and relationality rather than notions of competing interests. We offer recommendations for strategically using storytelling and framing techniques to build public engagement, spur equitable climate action and transform legal systems.

The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 is a landmark piece of sustainable development legislation and marks a significant development in the emerging legal identity of Wales. Despite the Act's significance and ambition, it has been criticized as merely ‘aspirational’ – as ‘non-law-bearing’ and unenforceable by legal means. The Act is not without difficulties. However, it also has notable legal and other qualities that are often not captured within the standard justiciability-enforceability frame of analysis. Our aim here is to broaden the context for examining the Act and other ‘aspirational’ legislation like it. To that end, we identify three sets of questions that help to bring out different ideas around the Act's varied enforceability, its possible constitutional status, and its potential role as a bearer of hope.

States have long been understood to have an obligation to protect the international legal rights and interests of others, consistent with the maxim sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas (use what is yours in such a manner as not to injure that of another). As the world's population becomes more interdependent, this no harm obligation becomes more significant. Further, as knowledge increases about the consequences of human activity for the climate and the environment, the no harm obligation takes on greater relevance vis-à-vis the interests of the Earth's future populations. Future generations’ legal interests have been recognized in the context of sustainable development and through the principle of intergenerational equity. The no harm rule requires that these interests be properly considered and addressed appropriately, commensurate with what is at stake. At a minimum, this may require avoidance of ‘manifestly excessive adverse impacts’.

Climate change uniquely affects those who are at the intersection of several inequalities simultaneously, such as those based on gender, age, and disability. This makes them ‘directly affected’ by climate change, which is crucial in establishing ‘victim status’ under Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights. At the same time, as a result of unequal power relations, intersectional victims face exclusion from, or minimal participation in, political decision-making processes concerning climate change. This further justifies their claim to victim status as a matter of procedural climate justice. As agents of change, intersectional victims, namely elderly women and girls with disabilities, can be empowered to contribute to climate decision making, thereby reshaping unjust power relations. The article examines two climate cases currently before the European Court of Human Rights: Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland, brought by elderly women, and Duarte Agostinho et al. v. Portugal and 32 other States, brought by children and young people.

The Supreme Court of India's judgment in Vedanta Ltd v. State of Tamil Nadu and Others, affirming the closure of Vedanta's copper smelting plant in Tuticorin in southern India, concludes a long and contentious chain of litigation. The plant's troubled history and the ensuing litigation reflect contestations between economic development, environmental and social devastation, human well-being, and corporate responsibility, which are often characteristic of environmental litigation in the global south. This article analyzes the significance of the Indian Supreme Court's reliance on established constitutional rights principles as well as settled environmental jurisprudence, and highlights the relevance of this judicial pronouncement for climate litigation in the global south.