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 “migration” of Future Generations from a moral to a judicial context represents a captivating development in contemporary legal discourse. Recent years have seen a surge in courts across various nations addressing the intersection of future generations and climate litigation. This nexus, far from being coincidental or sporadic, epitomizes a deeper societal and legal dilemma that necessitates a nuanced articulation for effective resolution. The main objective of this Article is to provide preliminary insights for contextualizing this legal evolution. Initially, the Article delineates the journey towards social legitimacy of climate science. Subsequently, it examines the impact of this social legitimation on judicial rulings, particularly observing an emerging trend in climate litigation to expand the temporal scope of legal relevance. The Article culminates in an exploration of the possible interplay between the legal significance of future generations and the extension of the law’s temporal horizon. This conjectural postulation is substantiated through select historical precedents.

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.

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 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.

This article offers a comprehensive analysis of rights-based climate litigation aimed at addressing climate change-induced loss and damage, underlining its potential as a transformative force amid the minimal progress towards a coordinated global response on this topic. It builds on literature highlighting the potential of rights-based climate litigation to fill the gap in accountability for climate change and its consequences, noting that research to date has not systematically analyzed the remedies that plaintiffs have sought or secured. By focusing on remedy claims, this study illuminates the capacity and the limitations of such litigation to unlock redress for loss and damage while highlighting its reciprocal relationship with international negotiations. This synergy implies a promising trajectory towards a more equitable climate governance framework, despite the complexities and challenges inherent in this rapidly evolving field.

Legal action by communities affected by climate change against high carbon corporate emitters is on the rise. At the same time, with the acceleration of a transition to a net-zero carbon economy, communities impacted by the implementation and operation of renewable energy projects are increasingly challenging shortcomings in the shift to renewable energy through ‘just transition litigation’. This strategy aims to ensure that respect for human rights is at the heart of the new energy paradigm, and that human rights abuses by the fossil fuel and mining sectors are not replicated. Progressive legislative reforms may also contribute to ensuring a fast and fair transition. This article examines how legal action and legislation may provide communities and rights-holders with pathways to climate justice – and sheds light on the need for a rights-centred approach by corporate actors and governments to the new energy transition.

This article assesses the implications of national climate litigation for what is termed ‘the international rule of law’. Starting from the finding that the current international climate treaty regime lacks several elements of an international rule of law, such as legal bindingness, clarity, and justiciability, the author explores what national courts contribute to filling these gaps. Deviating from a linear progression narrative, which is prevalent in existing literature, this article provides a more nuanced and complex picture. Whereas successful climate litigation is hardly imaginable without reliance on internationally agreed-upon facts – such as reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and global average temperature levels deemed ‘dangerous’ – doctrinally decisions do not represent a turn toward a stricter rule of international climate law. Instead of applying and progressively developing climate treaties, courts thus far have primarily used these provisions only to develop national constitutional law and regional human rights law. The created system of highly contextual national rule(s) of climate law is a fragmented one which is regionally limited to a few states predominantly located in Western Europe. Consequently, it is a far cry from a truly global rule of international climate law.

Climate change emergency requires rapide and determined action. The procrastination of the French state is not without consequences. One of them is that the High Administrative Court (Conseil d'Etat) found that climate risk is not taken seriously enough and is insufficiently addressed. In two decisions ruled in 2020 and 2021, the Conseil d'Etat in France had the opportunity to express itself on these issues. This is the case known as “Grande Synthe”, referring to the city that filed the petition before the High Court, in an appeal for “exces de pouvoir” –exces of power -, asking the administration to take further action in the fight against climate change. Civil society in France is indeed becoming impatient and taking legal action challenging the lack of ambition of the State in climate matters. The decision commented here will no doubt serve as a model for other similar decisions and for other European countries. It will lead to an increase of climate litigation in France and abroad.

This article traces the various legal incarnations of the intergenerational equity principle. Despite its silent proliferation in international and constitutional laws over the past five decades, the principle dwelled mostly at the margins of inquiry and practice. Recent efforts to counteract global warming have allowed intergenerational claims to gain new traction. Building on a comparison of ten climate-related lawsuits, I analyze the latest advances in the representation, conceptualization, and remediation of future generations’ interests. Against the backdrop of growing willingness to engage with intergenerational disputes, legal decision makers will need to confront two thorny challenges going forward. Firstly, evolving doctrines of extraterritoriality and legal subjecthood increasingly require the protective scope of the principle to extend to foreign citizens and non-human persons. Secondly, awareness of dispersed and interlocked long-term risks may trigger the application of intergenerational doctrines beyond a narrow environmental frame. Grappling with these challenges implicates larger reflections about the role of law in contriving our collective future.

Courts and scholars have interpreted open-ended legal norms as imposing due diligence obligations on States and other entities to mitigate climate change. These obligations can be applied in two alternative ways: through holistic decisions, where courts determine the level of mitigation action required of defendants; or through atomistic decisions, where courts identify some of the measures that the defendant must take. This article shows that, whilst most holistic cases fail on jurisdictional grounds, atomistic cases frequently succeed. Overall, it is argued that atomistic litigation strategies provide more realistic and effective ways for plaintiffs to prompt enhanced mitigation action.

The Supreme Court of the Netherlands construed the state’s positive human rights obligations as requiring a 25 per cent reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with 1990 levels. This article explores how judges can decide the level of state effort required to mitigate climate change. To date, judges have predominantly approached this issue by seeking to identify an elusive benchmark, either by deduction from global objectives or induction from state conduct. This article shows that the judicial assessment of a state’s requisite efforts inevitably relies on equity infra legem. Acknowledging this, judges could learn from the international courts’ experience with establishing clarity in the midst of vague legal rules.

On 26 May 2021, the District Court of The Hague (The Netherlands) passed an innovative judgment in Milieudefensie v. Royal Dutch Shell. The Court interpreted Shell's duty of care towards the inhabitants of the Netherlands as requiring it to mitigate climate change by reducing the carbon dioxide emissions resulting from its global operations by at least 45% by 2030, compared with 2019. This case comment salutes the identification of a corporate duty of care for climate change mitigation but expresses scepticism regarding the Court's interpretation of this duty. The Court's reading of global climate mitigation objectives and climate science, which form the basis of its determination of Shell's requisite level of mitigation action, is plagued with inconsistencies. It is argued here that, in order to determine the standard of care applicable to Shell, the Court should have relied not only on a ‘descending’ reasoning as to what ought to be done, but also on an ‘ascending’ reasoning accounting for industry practices.