Save the climate but don’t blame us: corporate arguments in climate litigation
File(s)
Author(s)
Walker-Crawford, Noah
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Fossil fuel companies no longer deny anthropogenic climate change in litigation, but they challenge the validity of climate science in establishing legal responsibility. Research on climate litigation, social movements, and legal mobilization has focused primarily on plaintiffs’ perspectives, showing how they use the judicial process as a site of knowledge production. This article shifts the focus onto defendants, conducting an analysis of scientific disputes in major climate change lawsuits and developing a typology grounded in both empirical analysis and theoretical insights for studying their arguments about science and evidence. Corporate defendants build evidentiary counter-narratives, challenge the substantive quality of plaintiffs’ claims, and contest the scientific integrity of compromising evidence. The future impact of such litigation will hinge on how courts evaluate climate research as legal evidence, and whether corporate defendants are successful in their efforts to reframe, undermine, and discredit the science.
Date Issued
2026-03-01
Date Acceptance
2026-02-01
Citation
Transnational Environmental Law, 2026, 15 (1), pp.142-169
ISSN
2047-1025
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Start Page
142
End Page
169
Journal / Book Title
Transnational Environmental Law
Volume
15
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
10.1017/S2047102525100186
Subjects
Climate
Climate law
Climate litigation
Evidence
Legal mobilization
Corporate
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2026-02-19