Litigating the Climate Emergency: The Global Rise of Human Rights-Based Litigation for Climate Action
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Description
This chapter presents the results of a comprehensive study of the universe of rights-based climate cases filed in domestic courts and in regional and international judicial and quasi-judicial bodies between 2015 and 2021. Part I offers an overview of human rights-based climate change (HRCC) litigation. Part II analyzes the legal rules and principles emerging from HRCC lawsuits and court decisions around the world. Part III offers conclusions about the potential and limitations of HRCC litigation in advancing climate action. The chapter argues that the regulatory logic and the strategy of HRCC litigation should be examined at the intersection of international and domestic governance. Litigants have predominantly followed a two-pronged strategy. They have (1) asked courts to take the goals of the climate regime (as set out in the Paris Agreement and IPCC reports) as benchmarks to assess governments’ policies and (2) invoked the norms and enforcement mechanisms of human rights to hold governments accountable for such goals. In the face of governments’ reluctance in taking the urgent measures that are needed to address the climate emergency, HRCC litigation can be fruitfully viewed as a bottom-up mechanism that provides domestic traction for the international legal and scientific consensus on climate action.
Source Publication
Litigating the Climate Emergency: How Human Rights, Courts, and Legal Mobilization Can Bolster Climate Action
Source Editors/Authors
César Rodríguez-Garavito
Publication Date
2022
Recommended Citation
Rodríguez-Garavito, César, "Litigating the Climate Emergency: The Global Rise of Human Rights-Based Litigation for Climate Action" (2022). Faculty Chapters. 1881.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1881
