This website provides two databases of climate change litigation, one for U.S. climate change litigation and one for non-U.S. cases.
The U.S. Climate Change Litigation database is a joint project of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School and Arnold & Porter. It tracks developments in litigation and administrative proceedings related to climate change. Michael B. Gerrard, then a partner at Arnold & Porter and now Faculty Director of the Sabin Center, and J. Cullen Howe, an environmental law specialist at Arnold & Porter, created the U.S. Climate Litigation Chart in 2007. The U.S. chart is updated on a monthly basis, and currently includes 1335 cases* with links to 7122 case documents.
The Non-U.S. Climate Litigation Chart was created in 2011 and is updated regularly. It currently includes 413 cases, with links to 642 case documents.
You can view past monthly updates here.
Site developed by Satellite Jones.
The Sabin Center and Arnold & Porter are also grateful to Rachel Bercovitz, Michael Choi, Shaun Field, Patrick Kelly, Kai Salem, and other staff at Columbia Law School and Arnold & Porter for their assistance with the transition to this website. The Sabin Center and Arnold & Porter are also grateful to the Asia Development Bank, the Grantham Institute, and the University of Melbourne’s Australia Climate Change Litigation Database for helping us identify climate change cases. We also appreciate our ongoing partnership with the United Nations Environment Program in surveying and assessing cases.
* The term “cases” in the U.S. chart comprises more than judicial and quasi-judicial administrative actions and proceedings. Other types of “cases” contained in the chart include rulemaking petitions, requests for reconsideration of regulations, notices of intent to sue (in situations where lawsuits were not subsequently filed), and subpoenas. In addition, one case may involve multiple complaints or petitions that have been consolidated, and the entry for a single case may include multiple decisions at the trial and appellate levels.