Climate Change on Trial - Mobilizing Human Rights Litigation to Accelerate Climate Action

List of contents

1. Introduction: Putting Climate Change on Trial; 2. Explaining the Rights Turn: Legal Opportunities and Mobilizing Frames at the Intersection of Human Rights and Climate Governance; 3. The Shape of the Field: Issues, Venues, Actors, and Strategies in Rights-Based Climate Litigation; 4. Addressing the Unique Challenges of Global Warming: The Evolving Law of Human Rights and Climate Change; 5. The Impact of Rights-Based Climate Litigation: Typology and Illustrations; 6. Looking Ahead: Lessons, Blind Spots, and the Potential of Rights-Based Climate Litigation.

Summary

Tells the twenty-year socio-legal story of human rights-based climate change (RCC) litigation. Based on an original database of the totality of RCC lawsuits around the world as well as interviews with leading actors and participant observation in the field, this Element explains the rise and global diffusion of RCC litigation as a form of climate governance. Combines insights from global governance, international law, climate policy, human rights, and legal mobilization theory in order to offer a sociolegal account of the actors, strategies, and norms that have emerged at the intersection of human rights and climate governance. By proposing a broad understanding of the impacts of legal mobilization that includes direct and indirect, material and symbolic effects, it documents the contributions and shortcomings of human rights litigation in addressing the climate emergency. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Foreword

Sociolegal rise and consolidation of human rights-climate litigation field and how it became a key aspect of global climate governance.

Product details

• Authors: César Rodríguez-Garavito
• Publisher: Cambridge Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 30.06.2025
• EAN: 9781009644327
• ISBN: 978-1-009-64432-7
• Illustrations: Worked examples or Exercises
• Series: Elements of Sustainability: Science, Policy, Practice
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Comparative and international political science; Climate Change, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Environmental Policy, Human rights & civil liberties law, International Relations, comparative law, Environment law, International Environmental Law, Public international law: environment, Law: Human rights and civil liberties