Continued efficiency makes climate goals effective—delays lead to reluctance and inaction against climate change
Cinnamon Piñon Carlarne 21, 19th President and Dean of Albany Law School, was the Associate Dean for Faculty & Intellectual Life at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, leading international expert in environmental and climate change law policy with a deep commitment to environmental equity and social justice, “The Essential Role of Climate Litigation and the Courts in Averting Climate Crisis”, Ohio State Legal Studies Research Paper No. 592, SSRN, 2021
Thus, even as the court ‘reluctantly’ concludes that the fact that ‘the other branches may have abdicated their responsibility to remediate the problem does not confer on Article III courts [the type of US court involved in this case], no matter how well-intentioned, the ability to step into their shoes’,60 the opinion underscores the courts’ deep intuition that political inaction is untenable. Moreover, in a powerful dissent, Judge Staton decried political inaction and declared that the plaintiffs’ suit was necessary ‘to enforce the most basic structural principle embedded in our system of ordered liberty: that the Constitution does not condone the Nation’s willful destruction’.
61 Analogizing the court’s delay in stepping in to recognize fundamental rights in the climate context to the failures of the court to step in earlier than it did with respect to desegregation, Judge Staton states that:
To be sure, unless there is a constitutional violation, courts should allow the democratic and political processes to perform their functions. And while all would now readily agree that the 91 years between the Emancipation Proclamation and the decision in Brown v. Board was too long, determining when a court must step in to protect fundamental rights is not an exact science. In this case, my colleagues say that time is ‘never’; I say it is now.62
The persistent failure of the state to address climate change threatens fundamental rights and derails the democratic and political processes. Judicial intervention is necessary to realign state responsibilities with fundamental rights. This is the role of the courts, and this is a core objective of climate litigation. Recognizing this relationship, and the role of the courts in safeguarding the fundamental rights of the people, is essential to upholding the rule of law and securing the wellbeing of the citizenry.