Publication

Beyond courts: Does strategic litigation affect climate change policy support?

In this article, Jaroslaw Kantorowicz describes the impact of strategic climate change litigation on public attitudes towards climate policy, using a UK-based experiment to explore the effects and limitations of legal cues on policy preferences.

Author: Jaroslaw Kantorowicz, Anna Kovács, Katharina Luckner & Anna Sekula
Date: 03 September 2024

Strategic climate change litigation is a rising phenomenon that has attracted considerable academic interest. Still, limited understanding exists of the effects of strategic litigation cases outside the courtroom – more specifically, on whether strategic litigation can influence public attitudes on climate change policy. The authors explore the impact of strategic climate change litigation (SCCL) on public preferences for climate policy. Using a pre-registered vignette experiment with a representative sample of UK citizens, they assess whether information about SCCL influences policy attitudes. The findings reveal no direct effect of SCCL on changes in public attitudes, suggesting that legal cues might impact policy preferences in a more indirect and cumulative way.

Read the full article here.