Educating Judges in Climate Science

The climate-science community is making an extraordinary contribution to assisting the judiciary in its need to weigh scientific evidence in climate cases. Judges are increasingly being called upon to hear cases related to the impacts and consequences of climate change. Such cases range from lawsuits seeking damages by state and private actors against fossil-fuel interests to claims regarding sufficiency of climate impact reviews in the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act to constitutional and public trust claims—and many more. To prepare, judges are asking for education in the science and impacts of climate change, in order to be able to weigh evidence and make better-informed decisions. Judges are typically legal generalists and often are not educated in science. To provide such education, a nonpartisan, non-advocacy group of climate scientists and legal scholars called the Climate Judiciary Project of the Environmental Law Institute has been providing judicial education programs in climate science since 2018.

The US climate-science community has eagerly embraced this groundbreaking project, offering to contribute their time and expertise usually on a pro-bono basis. Through the Project, scientists deliver seminars and a multi-module curriculum on climate science written by leaders in the field. The curriculum has been developed with the advice of a distinguished advisory committee of scientists, judges, and legal scholars, and modules are peer-reviewed to assure accuracy, relevance, and appropriate level of presentation. Now in its fourth year, the Project has reached hundreds of state and federal judges and plans to expand by providing in-depth materials and casting a wider net to more judges throughout the nation. The Project has engaged the evaluation firm Mathematica to help define metrics of success and then to measure them.

In this presentation, the Project leader will discuss the scope of the Project, involvement by top leaders in the climate science community in teaching, results to date, and plans for the future.