The National Science Foundation is funding Associate Professor Sabrina McCormick of the Milken Institute School of Public Health of the George Washington University to study climate change lawsuits. In the U.S., the courts will play a central role in “determining the nature of society’s response to climate change,” McCormick points out in her proposal.
“Climate change may be the most significant environmental crisis ever,” McCormick says. Courts are involved in two of the three policy pathways through which climate mitigation and adaptation can be achieved, administrative regulation and lawsuits, she explains. Legislation is the third pathway, but “the political gridlock that currently characterizes the legislative environment in the United States makes legislative solutions extremely unlikely for the foreseeable future,” she says.
Over the past 25 years, an increasing number of climate change lawsuits have been launched by groups with links to industry and environmental non-profits, as well as private individuals. “There has been little analysis of how the lawsuits are launched, decided, evolve over time, or affects the plaintiffs, often activists, who engage in them,” McCormick says.
McCormick’s goals for her research project include evaluating how social movements frame climate science and new legal theories for the courts. She also plans to investigate how the courts respond to cases involving climate change and how the cases affect social movements.