The Right to a Life-Sustaining Climate System: Selected Case Law

Abstract

This article analyses the legal discourse concerning the right to a life-sustaining climate system. The subject of analysis is the discourse around selected landmark cases in which arguments were raised about the need to protect a stable climate for the sake of protecting fundamental constitutional rights threatened by the climate crisis (Juliana v United States, Urgenda v Netherlands, Neubauer v Germany, and Hawai’i Electric Light Co.). The analysis is conducted from the point of view of the legal sources (applicable legal norms, clearly recognised constitutional rights) from which this unenumerated fundamental right is derived. This analysis allows us to assume that the right to a life-sustaining climate system is understood in legal discourse as: (i) a constitutional right derived from the right to life, liberty and property as necessary for their realisation, or (ii) a constitutional right encompassed by the right to a clean and healthy environment, or even as (iii) a constitutional right that is a predicate of all constitutional rights. In the author’s view, this right can also be understood as an unexpressed item (aspect) of the right to life.