Fossil fuel companies no longer deny anthropogenic climate change in litigation, but they challenge the validity of climate science in establishing legal responsibility. Research on climate litigation, social movements, and legal mobilization has focused primarily on plaintiffs’ perspectives, showing how they use the judicial process as a site of knowledge production. This article shifts the focus onto defendants, conducting an analysis of scientific disputes in major climate change lawsuits and developing a typology grounded in both empirical analysis and theoretical insights for studying their arguments about science and evidence. Corporate defendants build evidentiary counter-narratives, challenge the substantive quality of plaintiffs’ claims, and contest the scientific integrity of compromising evidence. The future impact of such litigation will hinge on how courts evaluate climate research as legal evidence, and whether corporate defendants are successful in their efforts to reframe, undermine, and discredit the science.

The regulation of groundwater remains underdeveloped globally and often lags behind the domestic governance of surface water. As a result, groundwater is often subject to unfettered extraction, uses, and contamination. A clear understanding of ownership is central to the success of domestic regulations. However, the types of ownership regime in place in nations around the world are poorly documented in the academic literature. This study addresses that gap through a comparative analysis of domestic groundwater ownership regimes across ten jurisdictions in nine countries spanning five continents. It identifies three dominant models of groundwater ownership: private ownership, public ownership, and non-ownership with public oversight. It then examines how these ownership doctrines impact key dimensions of groundwater governance, including the nature and transferability of the ownership right, the level of government at which regulation takes place, implications for rights of use, and interactions with customary and Indigenous rights. Doing so offers unique insight into how nations with different legal traditions, governance structures, and customary practices address the ownership of groundwater resources. It also suggests that different ownership (and non-ownership) models can have distinct implications for other aspects of groundwater governance.

The ecological transition needs a shift in the definition of the role of the state from a market-correcting to a market-steering actor. This transformation inevitably reverberates within private law, whose institutions participate in distributing the social and economic burdens of sustainability policies. Focusing on the housing sector as a paradigmatic site of tension between environmental imperatives and social justice, the paper examines how measures aimed at improving the energy performance of buildings and promoting urban greening can generate regressive distributive effects, including rising housing costs, green gentrification, and heightened risks of indebtedness and displacement for vulnerable groups. Against this background, the paper argues that private law must be reconceptualised as a tool capable of mitigating these structural inequities.

As the risk of climate overshoot grows, attention increasingly turns to climate interventions, that is technologies designed to actively alter the climate system beyond conventional mitigation and adaptation. The article addresses questions of institutional legitimacy and recognition justice, the implications of international legal fragmentation, competing approaches to risk analysis, the application of precautionary and prevention principles, market governance of CDR, the role of intellectual property regimes, and regional perspectives. The most striking tension revolves around the question of how risks should be analysed and compared. Climate intervention governance does not exist in a vacuum but is an emerging field shaped by partial institutional coverage, normative contestation, and private-sector acceleration against a background of limited public salience. This article situates climate intervention governance within broader debates on risk regulation. Building on and critically synthesising the contributions published in the European Journal of Risk Regulation’s Special Issue devoted to the governance challenges posed by Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), the article identifies cross-cutting themes that will shape governance debates in the coming years. It concludes that climate intervention governance is ultimately a test case for contemporary risk analysis and regulation and collective self-governance, under conditions of radical uncertainty.

Transnational climate litigation has become a strategic tool to press state and non-state actors into action. An analysis of international and domestic cases shows how rights and obligations are being materially, subjectively, spatially and temporally stretched in judicial proceedings. This article focuses on three distinct grammars of climate justice activated in climate litigation. The analysis exposes a shift from a traditional to a progressive grammar that moves from actual to potential climate harms, from human to nonhuman rights, from territorial to extra-territorial obligations, and from present to future generations. Beyond a traditional liberal framing of rights-based approaches to climate justice, we witness here a progressive critical grammar that broadens the scope of who can be considered legally affected by climate change, where, and how. A more radical understanding of climate justice, however, exceeds the capacity of these registers to confer structure, order, and meaning to climate harms across matter, subjects, space and time. Against this backdrop, a reparative grammar of climate justice is envisioned, which reconfigures the material boundary from potential to entangled harms, the subjective boundary from nonhuman victims to more-than-human care, the spatial boundary from extra-territorial to terrestrial spatiality, and the temporal boundary from future to enduring temporalities. In doing so, the analysis opens up a register of political thought for climate justice that starts in the law yet vastly exceeds and disrupts it.

Drawing on unbalanced panel data with a maximum of 271,656 bilateral trade flow observations from 1996 to 2021, this study investigates both the linear and nonlinear influence of national Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance gaps on green exports. When the ESG performance of the exporting country exceeds that of the destination country, the results indicate that an increase in the ESG gap significantly stimulates green exports, and there is evidence that this stimulating effect is achieved by widening green innovation gaps. However, the marginal effect diminishes as environmental regulations in the destination country become more stringent. Conversely, when the exporting country’s ESG performance is lower, narrowing the ESG gap leads to an N-shaped relationship with green exports, which remains U-shaped after removing the extremes. This research provides empirical evidence and policy implications for the trade effects of ESG performance from a macro perspective, while supporting the rationality and necessity of the ESG concept.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) recently issued its first rulings on climate change, affirming that the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) requires states to take action. These landmark rulings will profoundly impact both the ECHR and international law. They strike a balance between states’ discretion in regulating climate policy and the human rights protection needed for future generations. However, the ECtHR left several key questions unanswered. More fundamentally, the rulings raise the question of whether a human rights court is the best forum for climate change litigation.

Environmental protection is widely considered a core function of the state. Yet more than 210 million people currently live under the control of armed non-state actors (ANSAs), many of whom exercise state-like authority over vast, environmentally important territories. Despite growing legal and political science scholarship on ANSAs, their role in environmental protection remains largely unexplored. International law, shaped by conflict-centric frameworks, often fails to account for ANSAs’ non-military dimensions – especially those related to environmental service provision. Similarly, theories of rebel governance have yet to meaningfully incorporate environmental service provision as a governance facet. The article addresses this gap by examining the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP) in Colombia, drawing on documentary analysis and interviews with former combatants. It shifts the limited ecological perspective on war, arguing that the FARC-EP’s environmental practices amounted to a form of rebel environmental governance – structured, intentional and legally plural. Through this case study, the article challenges dominant narratives that view ANSAs solely as environmental spoilers or incidental protectors and instead advocates for a more comprehensive understanding of their impact as environmental service providers and lawmakers. In doing so, the paper reframes ANSAs as socio-legal actors whose environmental practices merit scholarly attention – particularly in ongoing debates around accountability and transitional justice in conflict-affected regions.

The corporate responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is seen increasingly as having a legal dimension, grounded in human rights, due diligence laws, and tort law. Corporate climate strategies often rely on carbon credits to offset emissions, but available credits typically fail to deliver real reductions. This raises doubts about their suitability for meeting responsibilities to reduce emissions.

This article examines the issue through the lens of due diligence, a key concept in defining corporate obligations. Due diligence demands that firms prioritize preventive and effective action to address the climate impacts of their business activities. Available carbon credits meet neither condition; accordingly, they are, as a rule, unsuitable for fulfilling a corporate duty to reduce GHG emissions.

The article also evaluates exceptions suggested in guidance documents, particularly the use of credits for offsetting residual and Scope 3 emissions. It concludes that these exceptions are difficult to justify from a due diligence standpoint, given the limited effectiveness of credits.

The 2025 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change constitutes a diligent and reasoned exposition of the main bodies of international law on climate change. The Court read this law harmoniously and clearly identified States’ obligations as well as the legal consequences of breach. Under both treaty and customary international law, States must act with due diligence and do their utmost to mitigate climate change, including through action on fossil fuel production and consumption. The Court confirmed that the law of State responsibility applies if States fail to fulfil their obligations, and sketches a pathway for establishing causation of harm that would become relevant if reparation were sought.

This article examines the key dimensions of the Advisory Opinion, including the applicable law identified by the Court and its analysis of State responsibility, informing readers of the Court’s main findings and their consequences. It also puts forward a few reflections, including on the Advisory Opinion’s emphasis on international cooperation and finance flows, the Court’s views on sea-level rise and self-determination, the role of science in the Advisory Opinion and what the Court left for the future.

In numerous climate litigation cases before national courts, plaintiffs have referred to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol, and/or the Paris Agreement to support their claims. So far, no systematic appraisal has been conducted on how national courts have responded to such references to international climate law and the extent to which they have engaged with it. This article examines 148 cases in which plaintiffs refer to international climate law, mapping and analyzing judgments of national courts that either avoid, align with, or contest this legal framework. The findings indicate that invoking international climate law is not an easy path to success, as courts often have opted to avoid engagement with claims based on international climate law. Yet, in several landmark cases, courts have aligned with international climate law, contributing to the advancement of the objectives of the Paris Agreement.

Policies on the demand side of fossil fuels are not enough to fight against climate change, and policies on the supply side should be adopted as supplements. The idea of phasing out fossil fuels at the starting point of the energy chain, despite the fact that it has not yet been legally binding, has been seriously discussed in the Conference of the Parties. In this regard, the special situation of highly fossil fuel-dependent countries (HFFDCs), such as Iraq and Azerbaijan, should be fully considered under Article 4.8 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This article seeks to analyse the legal approach and arguments of the HFFDCs and the non-fossil fuel-dependent countries (NFFDCs), such as Austria and Sweden, towards policies and initiatives to phase out fossil fuels. The NFFDCs, relying on the just transition stemming from principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities, have put forward the initiatives of creating a non-binding coalition and a binding treaty in analogy with the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In contrast, the HFFDCs, based on the principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources, have presented the Net Avoided Emission and phasing out fossil fuel emissions initiatives. Each party has a fundamental criticism of the legal arguments and the initiative of the other party. The idea of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2018 to promote the human right to equitable development can reconcile the parties’ arguments. This idea requires the NFFDCs to cooperate with the HFFDCs in improving the level of human development and reducing the economic and social effects rising from phasing out fossil fuels in the HFFDCs.

This study examines the transformation of environmental public interest lawyering in China within an ever-tightening legal order, where activists confront both state suppression and co-optation. Utilizing qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews with 49 environmental lawyers and activists, participant observations, and online ethnography, the research delineates two divergent models of legal mobilization. The conventional model prioritizes compliance with state regulations, employing impact litigation and consensus-building with state institutions to drive incremental environmental reforms, often at the cost of aligning with state priorities. In contrast, guerrilla lawyering emerges as an innovative strategy, leveraging decentralized networks, experimentalist litigation, flexible funding, and diffused media tactics to sustain activism while preserving autonomy. By transforming courts into platforms for generating critical information and exposing systemic vulnerabilities, guerrilla lawyering resists assimilation into state-controlled schemes. This approach not only ensures movement survival amidst repression but also enriches theoretical understandings of legal mobilization under authoritarianism by addressing the understudied risk of co-optation. These findings illuminate the resilience and ingenuity of activists in China’s constrained environmental advocacy landscape and offer a transferable framework for resistance for social movements in other authoritarian contexts, amid the global rise of authoritarian legality.

The death of Ella Kissi-Debrah in 2013 will be forever notable as the first instance in the United Kingdom of air pollution being recorded as contributing to the death of an individual. Whilst in itself a monumental shift in consideration of air pollution and the impact on human health, the recording by the coroner of Ella’s death as having been contributed to by air pollution has significant human rights implications. This piece considers the circumstances surrounding both Ella’s death and the report of the coroner and connects these to decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. It presents the argument that the failure to address a known risk to life presented by air pollution could constitute a breach of the right to life protected by Article 2 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR). Cases in which environmental conditions are found by the Court to have breached Article 2 are rare, but this paper contends that the formal acknowledgement of the threat of air pollution as a result of Ella’s death means that failure to address it meets this threshold.

In recent years, courts across the world have increasingly held governments accountable for addressing climate change. While such rulings have fueled optimism about constitutional law as a vehicle for climate ambition, this Article argues that the role of constitutional law in advancing climate goals is far more complex and contested. Constitutions encapsulate diverse and sometimes conflicting values, which can create tensions when courts adjudicate climate policies. As government climate measures become more concrete, conflicts arise between rights, institutional structures, and political realities. Drawing on examples from Germany, Canada, and Mexico, this Article highlights the challenges of adjudicative uncertainty, the underspecificity of constitutional norms, and the polyvocality of constitutional values in the context of climate change. This Article concludes with recommendations for judges to adopt a principled, context-sensitive approach to constitutional climate adjudication, balancing the urgency of climate action with the complexities of state capacity and constitutional structures.

This comment argues for the recognition of ecocide as an international crime, focusing on its contemporary legal relevance and the growing momentum for its codification. Originally coined in 1970 to describe wartime environmental destruction, the term ecocide was framed in parallel to genocide and grounded in the post–World War II development of international criminal law. Although initial legal efforts to formalize ecocide, including proposed conventions and debates during the drafting of the Rome Statute, failed to secure sufficient political support, these early shortcomings have been re-energized by rising environmental consciousness and sustained legal advocacy, particularly by the Stop Ecocide Foundation. Recent developments, including the 2021 legal definition proposed by the Independent Expert Panel and the 2024 amendment proposal to the Rome Statute advanced by Pacific Island nations, reflect a renewed and increasingly actionable international consensus. By examining the conceptual genealogy of ecocide and its doctrinal links to international humanitarian and criminal law, this comment contends that recognizing ecocide as a core international crime is not only a normative necessity but also a legally coherent and pragmatic step. It directly responds to the scale and urgency of present environmental crises and addresses a longstanding gap in the enforcement architecture of international criminal law.

The European Union (EU) has embraced the “twin transition” – the simultaneous pursuit of digitalisation and ecological transformation – as a cornerstone of its industrial policy. EU lawmakers argue that digital technologies can advance environmental protection by enhancing environmental monitoring, optimising resource use, and enabling data-driven sustainability efforts. However, this vision tends to overlook the environmental costs of digitalisation, including rising energy and water consumption, intensive resource extraction, and the proliferation of electronic waste. This article critically examines whether EU law is adequately equipped to support a twin transition, drawing on a black-letter analysis of EU legal provisions, as well as insights from science and technology studies and critical environmental law. It posits that, while environmental law plays a significant role in the datafication of the environment and the digitalisation of society, it falls short in regulating digital technology and data in ways that advance sustainability. For the twin transition to evolve beyond a political slogan and deliver real ecological benefits, substantial legal reforms would be required. The regulation of digital technology would have to move beyond corporate self-regulation and disclosure-based models of environmental governance. Data governance should be reoriented to emphasise freedom of access and a more deliberatively restrained approach to data generation.

The European Union (EU) Emissions Trading System (ETS) is the cornerstone of the EU’s attempt to decarbonise economic production in Europe. This paper questions the power and class relations that are built into the EU’s choice to address the climate crisis through the legal construction of emissions trading. Drawing on Marxist theory, the paper argues that the cost of emission allowances imposed by the ETS is a form of climate rent. In both the choice of this system and its implementation, the EU prioritises capital accumulation in order to protect the competitiveness of EU firms on the global market. This paper argues that the ETS thus jeopardises the progress of decarbonisation on two grounds. First, the EU’s implementation of the ETS has tended to increase the economic wealth of capital by redistributing economic value away from workers and towards the capitalist class. By raising the cost of essential goods, the ETS will likely damage the reputation of climate action and thus jeopardise public support for decarbonisation. Second, the ETS is part of the EU’s indirect approach to climate policy, which seeks to shape the actions of private capital in the direction of climate objectives. However, the severity of climate change calls instead for the use of law and public power to directly and consciously shape the rapid decarbonisation of society.

A fundamental and widely recognized inequity at the core of the existential climate crisis facing the planet today is that those who have contributed the least to climate change are also the most affected. The United States, European Union-28, Russia, Japan, and Canada, according to some accounts, are together responsible for 85 percent of global greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions thus far.1 Yet it is the climate vulnerable—least developed countries, low lying, and small island states among others—that are at the frontlines of climate impacts. There is widespread scientific and diplomatic consensus on the multiple causes and devastating impacts of climate change but so far justice for vulnerable states has proven elusive.

The debate over whether, when, and by whom reparations should be paid for climate-related loss and damage has been central to the struggle over the role of international law in responding to climate change. The push for climate reparations is an attempt to have international law treat the harm caused by climate change with the same gravity as issues such as the damage caused by war, gross violations of human rights, or injury to the economic interests of foreign investors. At stake in that struggle is a broader question that goes to the heart of the global political economy: who should bear the social costs of industrialization and technological development on a global scale?