Climate lawfare's back-channel campaign, and how you'll pay the bill

In The Federalist No.78, Alexander Hamilton famously promised that the federal judiciary would have "neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment." The climate lawfare movement has spent the better part of a decade trying to prove Hamilton wrong.Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Suncor Energy v.

County Commissioners of Boulder County, in which Boulder seeks to use Colorado public nuisance law to make two energy companies pay for the effects of global climate change.The case is the culmination of a long campaign.SUPREME COURT BEGINS NEW TERM WITH HIGH-PROFILE LOOK AT CLEAN AIR AND FEDERAL AUTHORITYA small, well-funded network of climate activists, convinced that drastic action is needed to save the planet and frustrated that their fellow citizens have not voted to dismantle the fossil-fuel industry, have turned to state and local courts after the Supreme Court unanimously shut down federal climate-nuisance suits in 2011’s American Electric Power v.Connecticut.

Their strategy rests on a single premise: When the front door of democracy is closed, try the courthouse back door.But thanks to documents released September 30 by the House Judiciary Committee, we no longer have to guess.One of the movement’s architects put the strategy in writing.CLIMATE SEMINARS FOR JUDGES FACE FUNDING TRAIL PROBE AMID FEARS OF OUTSIDE INFLUENCE ON COURTS"It seemed to me that without legislative or executive action to address the climate problem, real government action might still be derived from court decisions," Paul Hanle wrote in a May 2022 email.

Hanle founded the Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project, which has put at least 140 federal judges through its climate "education" seminars.In the same email, he laid out CJP’s strategy to target "key judges" with seminars, hoping to "make a great difference in the final outcome of cases."The crown jewel was the judges’ own science manual.

In December 2022, the National Academies of Scie...