Are judges saving the climate now?

Is there a right to a livable climate? National courts in Germany and France, as well as the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, are set to hear historic cases: In several German cities, judges are hearing cases against large car companies for the first time on the basis of climate lawsuits. In Paris, the highest administrative court has given the government a deadline to change its environmental policy. It is not doing enough to protect the climate. A group of young people are taking 12 European countries to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, demanding their right to a healthy climate. And now, judges at the same court are deciding whether the Swiss government is doing too little to protect elderly people from the consequences of the climate crisis. Two thousand senior citizens are suing their country’s government over its climate policies.

More and more often, lawyers are taking environmental issues to court. For the first time, they can rely on groundbreaking rulings that have recently been made: at the end of 2021, the UN Human Rights Council recognized that living in a clean environment is a human right. Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the country’s climate protection law was incompatible with the German constitution. And in the Netherlands, judges ordered Shell to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Are we now moving closer to the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement through court rulings? And how does it affect our societies when courts begin setting binding guidelines for environmental policy?