1. Introduction
Clinical legal education has undergone significant evolution since the first programmes began over half a century ago. This evolution is particularly pronounced at the intersection of clinical legal education and climate change litigation. As the climate crisis continues to escalate, so too does the need to address climate injustices, including through legal action.Footnote 1 This article aims to explore the throughline between clinical legal education and climate change litigation, highlighting how clinics are adapting their approaches to tackle complex cross-border issues. Our research emerges from the collaboration between two law clinics based at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec (Canada) and the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) in Lima (Peru), respectively. The collaboration came about at the founding of McGill’s Transnational Justice Clinic in 2023, when the director of an Environmental Law Clinic at PUCP responded to the call for partner organizations.Footnote 2 With input from the clinic directors, students from both clinics wrote an amicus curiae brief for landmark climate litigation in Peru. The collaboration serves both as the impetus for this article and as a case study.
The case, Álvarez v. Peru, was brought by a group of Peruvian young persons seeking to halt deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.Footnote 3 The clinics prepared an amicus curiae brief aimed at providing the Peruvian court with an overview of global climate litigation as background for addressing the first such case in Peru. Over the course of the academic year, clinic participants canvassed the climate litigation landscape in countries around the world and engaged in a praxis of research, sharing, feedback, reflection, and revision. Drawing on that experience, clinic participants concluded that transnational collaboration is itself an important vehicle to advance climate litigation. To develop this idea, the co-authors reviewed the literature on clinical legal education, particularly the aspect of global north–south clinic cooperation. Combined with the knowledge gained about global climate litigation by drafting the amicus curiae brief, the co-authors elicited insights from their case study to contribute to the intersection of the literature on clinical legal education and that of climate change litigation. To fill in gaps encountered in the drafting process, the co-authors adopted a reflective methodology, using three surveys in which participants could elaborate on their experience of working on the amicus brief. Designed by the clinic directors, the surveys invited participants to provide short answers to questions on (i) lessons learned working on the brief, (ii) the experience of global north–south collaboration, and (iii) skill and professional development.
Based on our collaborative experience, we intend to highlight the substantive and pedagogical benefits of a transnational framework for legal clinics to become involved in climate litigation. We begin by examining the historical development of clinical legal education, from local, community-based programmes to those focused on international human rights and transnational collaborations. By providing students with opportunities to work on real cases and engage with communities affected by climate change, legal clinics are intended to bridge the gap between academic studies and professional practice.
Transnational legal clinics differ from this model in so far as they specifically combine the objectives of clinical methodologies with the framework of transnational law. Unlike traditional clinics that focus primarily on local issues within one body of law, transnational legal clinics leverage multiple legal frameworks, at the domestic and international levels. In addition, transnational legal clinics contribute to the educational mission of law schools and allow future lawyers to be trained in novel and transformative ways. As we argue throughout this article, the creative and engaged legal pedagogy of clinic collaboration invites law students not only to observe and understand the legal process and the role of legal standards in it but also to participate actively in their development. These elements make transnational legal clinics particularly well equipped to intervene in global issues such as climate change, and to participate in the progressive enforcement of laws.
Moreover, legal clinics adopting a transnational approach are prepared for cross-border collaboration by design. While literature on clinic collaboration emphasizes the structural challenges that arise from inequalities between the global north and the global south, the transnational legal clinic collaboration we present here coalesces around the principle of solidarity and decentres presumptions about expertise and power imbalances. Transnational legal clinics may, as such, participate in climate litigation on a wider scale while attending to the social context of local communities and better navigate the tensions at the heart of the ideal of climate justice.
Finally, through our discussion of the joint work on the Álvarez brief, we illustrate the substantial benefits and potential limits of partnerships on climate litigation between clinics from the global north and south. Much of the global climate litigation landscape already converges on several environmental human rights and equity principles, especially as it relates to young people and future generations. By exchanging knowledge across borders, transnational legal clinics can contribute further ideas informed by comparative perspectives to global climate jurisprudence. At the same time, their work can pursue localized solutions to address specific challenges faced by communities affected by climate change. By way of example, we highlight one amicus section that particularly benefited from the collaborative process – namely, that on the different approaches to remedies taken in both hemispheres. We also acknowledge potential limits to the effectiveness of amicus curiae briefs, including uncertainty about the extent to which the judges considered this brief in reaching their conclusions or how different remedial approaches would have an impact on the outcome of climate litigation. Indeed, the limits, challenges, and difficulties of transnational clinic collaboration may warrant further research and are discussed here only to the extent that they arose in this collaboration. Based on the case study, we argue for the value of transnational collaboration in the process of articulating and upholding climate change norms and laws.
2. The Throughline in Clinical Legal Education to Climate Change Litigation
2.1. The Evolution of Clinical Legal Education
In both Canada and Latin America, clinical legal education programmes began to emerge in the 1960s and 1970s as an import from the United States (US).Footnote 4 These clinics were founded on a desire to provide practical solutions towards social justice, or ‘community-based access to justice’.Footnote 5 In Latin America, specifically Peru, ‘public interest law clinics’ emerged slightly later, in a second wave of programmes in the 1990s.Footnote 6
There are two broad motivations for clinical legal education programmes. Firstly, they allow students to learn through hands-on involvement with legal issues, thus bridging the gap between academic and professional settings. Secondly, they position students to apply their legal skills to community service.Footnote 7 Traditional legal clinics often, though not always, focus on providing legal services to disadvantaged or vulnerable clients under the supervision of a practising lawyer, either on a voluntary basis or in exchange for academic credit or some remuneration.Footnote 8
While these core aims remain, legal clinics continue to evolve. By the 1980s, American clinics focusing on international human rights started to operate alongside community-based clinics.Footnote 9 International human rights clinics differ in that they do not always serve clients directly and, instead, can work in partnership with other non-profit organizations or institutions.Footnote 10 Some clinics focus on litigation, while others take on a broad array of projects involving, for instance, policy research or legislative advocacy.Footnote 11
Today, international human rights clinics often leverage both domestic and international law as they seek to address complex legal issues.Footnote 12 A key premise to this layered approach is that the international community is not solely shaped by states, but also depends on critical contributions by civil society organizations.Footnote 13 Legal clinics seeking to carry greater weight in tackling cross-border issues therefore increasingly identify their work as being transnational, given that they do not confine themselves solely to international law.Footnote 14
2.2. Defining Transnational Legal Clinics
There is no commonly accepted definition of a transnational legal clinic, one reason for which may be that only a handful of clinics actively use the term.Footnote 15 In addition, there is the lack of a clear operational framework; though many international human rights clinics may have evolved to incorporate transnational dimensions, these dimensions are often overlooked, diminishing the clinic’s potential as an actor in an increasingly globalized legal practice. We argue that the lens of transnational law (as well as that of transnational collaboration) provides a strong organizing principle for the work of legal clinics that address global injustices across borders. To strengthen this potential, we suggest a common definition.
Any definition of a transnational legal clinic must start with the concept of transnational law. In 1956, Phillip Jessup coined this term to refer to all law that transcends national frontiers, whether it is public or private, domestic or international.Footnote 16 Transnational law addresses situations that ‘involve individuals, corporations, states, organizations of states, or other groups’.Footnote 17 One may thus think of transnational law as some kind of hybrid, where laws can be transplanted vertically between domestic and international legal orders as well as horizontally between different national legal systems.Footnote 18
Other than a hybrid of substantive laws, transnational law can also be seen as a methodological approach.Footnote 19 A transnational approach seeks legal solutions across local, domestic, and international scales. It is thus well suited to diffuse global issues with localized effects, such as the information technology revolution, migrant workers’ rights, and climate change.Footnote 20 Transnational law, as argued by Peer Zumbansen, is therefore a perspective from which one can navigate the ‘impossibilities’ and obstacles of law that manifest within the nation-state and beyond.Footnote 21 Central to this transnational methodology is a shift in perspective from mostly formal state-based laws to also focus on ‘actors, norms, and processes as the building blocks’ of law.Footnote 22
For the purposes of this article, a transnational legal clinic is a law school-based programme that combines the objectives of the clinical methodologies with the framework of transnational law. Transnational clinics represent the response of clinical legal education to the exigencies and ‘impossibilities’ of practising law in a globalized context.
To understand why transnational legal clinics are relevant, and how they differ from other legal clinics or transnational actors, one must also understand how transnational law works. The theory of transnational legal process describes how public and private actors interact in a variety of settings ‘to make, interpret, enforce, and ultimately, internalize rules of transnational law’.Footnote 23 It is, in other words, a process whereby ‘states and other transnational private actors use the blend of domestic and international legal process to internalize international legal norms into domestic law’.Footnote 24 Transnational legal clinics thus differ from more traditional clinics (both community-based and international human rights examples) in so far as they take part in this dynamic of ‘interaction, interpretation, and internalization’, rather than focusing exclusively on issues that take place on the domestic or international plane alone.Footnote 25
As actors within this process, transnational legal clinics possess significant ‘value and imperative’ in the progressive enforcement of international law.Footnote 26 It is important to challenge the assumption that the work of legal clinics does not go beyond that of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or other transnational actors. The fact that legal clinics are, by definition, set up within a university setting makes them a different creature altogether: firstly, compared with NGOs, transnational legal clinics benefit from the academic freedom and critical voice of a university.Footnote 27 Legal clinics are therefore less restricted than most NGOs. As Henry Steiner once noted, this environment of academic reflection and critique allows clinics to be ‘open to rethinking norms and institutions’, something that most other transnational actors may not have the time, capacity, or institutional arrangements to support.Footnote 28
Secondly, clinical legal education is part of a law school’s educational mission. The work of transnational legal clinics allows for lawyers to be trained in novel and transformative ways.Footnote 29 In general, clinical legal education not only prepares students to practise law or to defend certain rights but also instils in them an engagement and necessary awareness of their role as future lawyers to serve and bring about social justice.Footnote 30 This is why pedagogical innovation and diversity are so essential for clinical legal education. Creative and engaged legal clinical pedagogy also shows how law students are not passive observers of the legal process, but may seek proactively to influence legal standards. In an era of globalization, the nature of legal practice and the issues it faces are changing.Footnote 31 Current legal practice is in desperate need of ‘lawyers as social architects’, reflective of transnational legal processes and more literate in resolving the obstacles of transnational law.Footnote 32 It seems to us that transnational legal clinics are well equipped to do exactly that – to bolster the field of transnational law and to build the bench of future practitioners.
2.3. The Value of Transnational Clinic Methodology in Tackling Climate Change
The transnational methodology opens the door for legal clinics to engage with the scale and complexity of climate change.Footnote 33 Transnational legal clinics share some essential traits with other legal clinics in that both use experiential and reflective pedagogies to teach students practical skills.Footnote 34 Likewise, both focus on providing legal community services and advancing access to justice. Transnational legal clinics, however, are particularly well placed to tackle climate change.Footnote 35
Firstly, a transnational legal framework gives legal clinics the flexibility to include both domestic and international law as well as non-binding rules in their work.Footnote 36 In the case of climate change, a transnational approach might encompass domestic environmental legislation, regulations, and case law, alongside international treaties, Conference of the Parties (COP) decisions, or soft-law instruments. Secondly, just as it allows for the inclusion of different substantive areas of law, transnational law encompasses both private and public law, ‘which better allows clinics to engage with actors beyond just states’.Footnote 37 Dealing with private, non-state actors is crucial in the context of climate change.Footnote 38 By working with the full spectrum of norms that can bind or influence the behaviour of private actors, transnational legal clinics are better situated to ensure that businesses and other private entities are accountable for their role in furthering climate change.Footnote 39
Thirdly, transnational legal clinics are better prepared for cross-border collaboration because they work across different legal orders by design. When seeking to address global issues such as climate change, legal clinics may naturally seek to broaden their impact by partnering with counterparts in academic institutions abroad.Footnote 40 By pooling their knowledge of different legal frameworks and methodologies, clinics can craft effective and creative arguments, whether in the context of litigation or policy interventions.Footnote 41
Finally, in working together, transnational legal clinics can better navigate the tensions at the heart of the ideal of climate justice. Climate advocacy is vulnerable to criticism when it focuses exclusively on global policy solutions that do not address the immediate needs of affected communities.Footnote 42 This is one of the pitfalls identified by the literature when discussing climate justice in contrast to neighbouring concepts, such as environmental justice.Footnote 43 The risk of disconnect is exacerbated in the clinical legal education context, because many well-resourced legal clinics operate out of elite institutions in regions that do not bear the brunt of environmental degradation. Collaboration is therefore key not just because it allows for action on a wider scale but – perhaps paradoxically – because it may better attend to social context. Even as they adopt a transnational perspective when working together, each clinic remains rooted in its local connections with community-based work.
2.4. The Global North–South Axis of Transnational Legal Clinic Collaboration
The asymmetrical impact of climate change on communities located in the global north and south is one manifestation of global structural inequalities, which set the ground for transnational legal clinic collaboration. The clinical legal education literature acknowledges a pattern of imbalanced central-periphery relationships between academic institutions working across the global north and south.Footnote 44 The terms global ‘north’ and ‘south’ highlight asymmetries in political, cultural, and economic strength between countries, rather than acting solely as markers of geography. While most analysis of the north–south dynamic is concentrated on traditional international human rights clinics,Footnote 45 the transnational legal clinic approach in climate cases falls within the same general pattern.Footnote 46
Daniel Bonilla’s structural analysis of international legal clinics centres on the assumption that a relationship of subordination between legal institutions stems from and is reproduced through an imbalance of academic capital and financial resources between partners. Historically, this has increased the likelihood of southern partners ceding control in joint projects and being instrumentalized towards pedagogical aims of northern institutions at the expense of stated social justice objectives, and further risks perpetuating Western hierarchies of legal knowledge production.Footnote 47 This hierarchical relationship is primarily implicit and normalized, making it difficult to address fully. From this central ‘vertical’ challenge flow common tendencies which affect international clinic collaboration, including programmes weighted towards North American legal approaches; limited contact between global north and global south partner clinics; the lack of local perspectives towards the issue in focus; and students in the global north being given unjustified room to act as authoritative experts on complex issues.Footnote 48
Despite the foundational, geographically deterministic nature of this critique, Bonilla and other scholars maintain that international legal exchange and collaboration on social objectives are worthwhile, and ‘immensely valuable’.Footnote 49 James Silk and Sarah Paoletti, for example, draw on the structural framing as a call to design and operate clinics to overcome this dynamic, which they perceive as by no means inescapable. They articulate how the primary value of highlighting this structural dynamic is to understand exceptions to this norm and to examine the principles and design practices that enable more ‘equal’ partnership between clinics.Footnote 50
A fundamental commitment to solidarity in the design of a clinic can help to overcome global structural asymmetries at the level of individual partnerships. The concept of solidarity is rooted in understanding shared humanity, and from it derives the key principle of international human rights – universality.Footnote 51 Solidarity and a nuanced understanding of the principle of universality embrace diverse approaches and perspectives, informing a careful and empathetic approach to north–south engagement.Footnote 52 Crucially, the transnational legal clinic approach can facilitate the adoption of a commitment to solidarity and an orientation towards universality. Committing to a transnational method in clinical legal collaboration can further foster a practice of empathy and embrace a diversity of experiences – whether they be those of clinic collaborators or people affected by the issue which the clinic aims to address.
In our Canadian–Peruvian partnership, clinic participants, reflecting on the experience, affirmed the importance of solidarity as a central value.Footnote 53 Participants associated solidarity with empathy and understanding in responding to hurdles that arose in the collaboration. For instance, students in Canada appreciated the scheduling difficulties that students in Peru faced as they participated in the required legal clinic alongside academics and employment, whereas the students in Canada opted into the clinic as a remunerated extracurricular activity. Participants in Peru noted a further power asymmetry in that the Canadian students were in their second or higher post-secondary degrees and had more educational and professional experience. Participants underlined the difficulty for students in Peru working in English – which was not discussed but rather assumed to be the working language – and reflections demonstrated sensitivity, empathy, and solidarity in grappling with how language exacerbated the power imbalance.
In some important respects, however, the project design in this case flipped the global north–south structural asymmetry: the Peruvian clinic proposed the amicus brief to the Canadian clinic and was more familiar with the law in the case. During the collaboration, the Peruvian clinic participants taught participants in Canada about the substantive and procedural laws of Peru at issue in the case. Furthermore, the project of the amicus brief – which involved research and writing about the global landscape of climate litigation – enabled clinic participants to learn about the law outside their home jurisdictions. Through this project design, participants in Peru were more knowledgeable about the law at issue in the case and all clinic participants were learning beyond the familiar laws of their own countries.Footnote 54
3. Transnational Legal Clinic Collaboration in Climate Litigation
3.1. The Case of Álvarez v. Peru
In 2019, a group of young persons in Peru filed a constitutional claim against the state for failing to stop deforestation of the Peruvian Amazon. This was the first case in Peru among a series of similar youth-led cases around the world seeking to address the effects of climate change.Footnote 55 The plaintiffs, aged 8 to 14, brought the claim by writ of amparo under the Peruvian Constitution, alleging a threat to several constitutional rights, including the rights to life, health, water, a healthy and balanced environment, human dignity, and conditions of dignified existence.Footnote 56 The plaintiffs claimed that these rights were in jeopardy as a result of the climate crisis, emphasizing that Peruvian youth will bear the consequences of the state’s action and inaction. The plaintiffs further claimed that deforestation practices violate constitutional principles relating to biodiversity, sustainability, the best interests of the child, solidarity, and intergenerational equity.
The state respondents countered that the claim should be declared unfounded or inadmissible on both procedural and substantive grounds. In particular, they argued that (i) the claim asked the Court to reach conclusions not recognized in the Peruvian legal system; (ii) regional governments are already combating deforestation by implementing the National Environmental Policy (Política Nacional del Ambiente);Footnote 57 (iii) the writ of amparo was not the appropriate procedure for the plaintiffs’ requests; and (iv) the plaintiffs did not prove any act was committed that had led to the violation of the right to a healthy environment.
Although the claim initially was dismissed on procedural grounds, the plaintiffs sought a review of the decision following the enactment of the New Constitutional Procedural Code, which broadened the availability of amparo claims.Footnote 58 In May 2022, the claim was declared admissible and allowed to proceed, including a hearing during which the youth plaintiffs addressed the court. The amicus brief was filed as parties awaited the Court’s decision on the merits. On 13 May 2024, the Superior Court of Justice of Lima issued the ruling, denying the plaintiffs’ requests for targets to eliminate deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon and supplementary measures related to conservation to combat climate change. The Court dismissed the claims on the grounds that there was no constitutional omission and that the requested measures were addressed by existing legislation and policies.Footnote 59
Despite dismissing the case, the Court nevertheless made recommendations to several government bodies, including the Presidency of the Republic, the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, and the Ministry of Economy and Finance.Footnote 60 The recommendations urge these actors to implement national environmental policies aimed at reducing deforestation in the Amazon, allocating the necessary resources, and meeting the established deadlines.Footnote 61 This recommendation can be understood as a judicial call to action, prompting government to take concrete steps to address climate change.
Summary of the Claims and Court Rulings in Álvarez v. Peru
Note: *Ley Forestal y de Fauna Silvestre, Law No. 29763, 22 July 2011, available at: https://spij.minjus.gob.pe/spij-ext-web/#/detallenorma/H1035931.
3.2. Working Transnationally to Mobilize Global Climate Jurisprudence
In its 2024 decision dismissing the plaintiffs’ claims, the Superior Court admitted the amicus brief prepared by our clinics.Footnote 62 The amicus brief aimed to provide the Peruvian court with a panorama of climate litigation around the world, emphasizing the link between the rights invoked in the case and climate change more generally. Although the ultimate decision would be based on Peruvian law, the brief sought to prevent the judge from reaching a decision – whether favourable or not to the young people’s claims – that lacks context about climate litigation. At the same time, preparing the amicus brief allowed clinic participants to develop legal research, as well as analytical, written and oral communication, and other professional skills in working with transnational law.
Students employed a transnational research methodology. Canvassing domestic and regional litigation against states (relevant to the instant case against Peru) as well as international legal frameworks on climate change, the brief was not jurisdictionally bound by design. The global snapshot in the amicus brief showed how courts around the world have addressed the right to a healthy environment. The transjurisdictional picture also showed the Peruvian court how courts around the world have addressed key issues in the Álvarez case, such as evidence about the effect of climate change on the exercise of human rights, the application of the principle of intergenerational equity, and the ability of young people to vindicate the right to a healthy environment.
Reflecting on the process of preparing the amicus brief, students mentioned multiple layers of learning tied to the transnational collaboration. Footnote 63 They invoked their interest in moving beyond the classroom to work on a real case and found that collaborating across the global north and south helped them to appreciate the expanded possibilities of working to address climate change on a global scale rather than the more familiar focus on domestic litigation in law school. In terms of skill and professional development, students indicated that the collaboration enhanced their competencies in climate justice, noting the opportunity to apply legal knowledge across borders, advance local efforts to address environmental harm, and contribute to global climate litigation.Footnote 64 Students further gained communication skills by exchanging ideas with colleagues in a different legal system and local context.
The core lesson emerging from students’ reflections was that the process of collaboration itself was the most valuable aspect of the learning experience. Meeting regularly and discussing the case law from the perspective of one legal system and culture to another deepened participants’ contributions to the brief. Navigating differences pushed clinic participants to be creative in brainstorming, planning, and drafting the amicus brief. The very process of collaborating across countries caused clinic participants to listen carefully and openly to generate new ideas.
Students stressed that the collaboration substantially enriched their learning as well as the brief. Notably, in the process of preparing the amicus brief, participants reckoned with the different approaches adopted by courts to remedy violations of environmental rights. Taking a more moderate approach to remedies, global north judiciaries tend to emphasize the separation of judicial and executive powers, thus refraining from mandating government bodies to take positive action.Footnote 65 In contrast to these cautious decisions, courts in the global south have remedied climate-related human rights violations with more creative, involved, and systemic solutions. Latin American courts, for example, have ordered remedies that focus on structural transformations rather than remedies that solely rectify the impugned actions or inactions.Footnote 66 Having observed these differing remedial approaches, the amicus brief engaged with the work of Kent Roach, who advocates a ‘two-track approach’ to court remedies.Footnote 67 This approach combines specific measures aimed at remedying injuries suffered by individual litigants with ‘more ambitious, dialogic, and interactive systemic remedies’ aimed at preventing future violations.Footnote 68 The collaboration on the amicus brief between jurists familiar with both narrower and systemic remedies advanced the demand for combined remedies in climate litigation.
The reflections of students and the clinic directors also touched upon the impact of the collaboration. Especially, but not only, the Peruvian clinic participants emphasized the hope of contributing to a positive resolution of the Álvarez case and tackling climate change more broadly. The Peruvian students expressed that the consequences of the climate crisis have become more palpable and therefore more action is needed by state authorities to protect the environment. The law clinic collaboration allowed students to unite in contributing their visions of environmental justice, in this case, with special emphasis on protection of the Amazon.
4. Conclusion
This article describes the collaboration between two legal clinics, one in Peru and one in Canada, to develop an amicus curiae brief for a youth climate litigation case filed in Peru. The main lesson is that, by combining the objectives of clinical legal education with the framework of transnational law, partnerships between legal clinics from the global north and south can contribute to global climate jurisprudence and climate justice more broadly. Through our first-hand experience, we discovered it does so in two ways especially.
Firstly, the pedagogical value of transnational legal clinic collaboration lies in creating a space for learning about climate change law in transformative ways. Clinic participants found that by sharing knowledge across borders, they could advance localized efforts to limit environmental harm and offer creative ideas to propel climate justice. Transnational collaboration encourages cross-cultural communication, problem solving, and international network building, all of which form part of a larger climate justice movement. By adopting a transnational approach, legal clinics are likely to adopt solidarity as a core tenet of their purpose and cross-border collaboration as a method to achieve their clinical aims, thereby overcoming some of the differences in access to resources that often characterize global north–south collaborations.
Additionally, the educational impact of transnational legal clinic collaboration goes beyond the technical skills gained; it also fosters self-reflection and critical thinking, as students engage in understanding their roles in the transnational legal process. This reflective learning process encourages students to see the importance of the collaborative journey, highlighting how the legal learning process can be as valuable as the legal outcomes. As such, transnational legal clinic collaboration bolsters the field of transnational law and helps to train reflective and unified climate change lawyers.
Secondly, transnational legal clinic collaboration also has clear substantive value. Tracing the development of clinical legal education, the emergence of this type of collaboration is an important development for intervening in climate litigation. While more traditional clinics tend to focus on a single body of law, transnational legal clinics can work across existing legal frameworks at the domestic and international levels and, through comparison and dialogue, propose inventive and effective strategies. In the Álvarez brief, the proposal to pursue Roach’s ‘two-track approach’ to remedies offered a constructive framework by advocating the integration of individualized remedies with overarching, preventative measures. Clinic participants found varied ways to pursue the shared task of drafting an amicus curiae brief about the global climate litigation landscape to assist the Peruvian judges in deciding the case. The resulting brief contributed to the normative and interpretive framework supporting the Court’s decision. Despite the Court dismissing this case, the clinics participated in the process of envisioning and articulating progressive legal developments to uphold climate change law. For that reason, transnational legal clinic collaborations may not only contribute to new, creative legal strategies but also help in shaping the global understanding of climate change obligations and converge judicial decision making towards effective legal action.
Although the Álvarez case was not decided in favour of the young plaintiffs suing the Peruvian state for inaction on deforestation of the Amazon, the case nevertheless presents opportunities to advance climate litigation in Peru. The Superior Court of Justice of Lima acknowledged that deforestation of the Peruvian Amazon constitutes a severe and pressing issue that not only has an impact on the community at large but also threatens fundamental rights for current and future generations.Footnote 69 This acknowledgement emphasizes the critical need for the government to prioritize efforts to mitigate deforestation. Moreover, the case illustrates that the amparo procedure can serve as a viable constitutional mechanism to protect environmental rights. Finally, this experience shows that amici curiae can play an important role in climate litigation. In a conversation with the PUCP Clinic Director, distinguished former Supreme Court justice Héctor de Lama described amicus curiae briefs as indispensable in environmental cases because of the developing nature of these cases.Footnote 70 He emphasized that such briefs provide judges with invaluable tools and perspectives, facilitating the integration of scientific insights with legal principles and offering a crucial international and comparative viewpoint. Further, De Lama spoke of the anticipated increase in climate litigation in Peru, and the opportunity for legal clinics to play a role.
Going beyond this case, we insist on the value of global north–south collaboration in addressing climate change. The exchange of resources and ideas between legal clinics, in this case, offers a model for collaborative efforts that relies on solidarity and critical participation in the transnational legal process. In this sense, legal clinics transcend their academic origins, and function as actors in developing legal frameworks to address climate change. Overall, transnational legal clinic collaboration expands the possibilities of legal responses to the climate crisis and constitutes a space for ongoing action.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Andrea Chavez, Bernard Duhaime, Gorki Gonzales, Pablo Peña and Nandini Ramanujam for their feedback on this article. All errors remain the responsibility of the authors.
Funding statement
This paper was completed with support from the Adams-Burke Global Justice Fellowship at McGill University Faculty of Law.
Competing interests
The authors were all participants in law clinics at the McGill University Faculty of Law or the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. In addition, Andrea Mariana Dominguez is part of the network of Environmental Legal Clinics in Latin America, Ilana Cohen is a freelance climate journalist and former leader of the Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard campaign, and Luis Alejandro Pebe Muñoz works on climate change and human rights at the Institute for Democracy and Human Rights at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (IDEHPUCP).
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