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

International Review of Law and Economics, vol. 79, pp. 106213

Abstract

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. Based on the concept of legal cueing, we conduct a pre-registered vignette experiment with a quota-representative sample of UK citizens to study the impact of information on strategic climate change litigation on stated and revealed preferences for climate policy measures. We furthermore perform an exploratory analysis of participants’ demographic characteristics and their expressed sentiment towards a carbon tax. Overall, the experiment returns null results, suggesting no direct link between strategic climate litigation and policy attitudes in our experimental setup. We discuss how legal cues may affect attitudes in a more indirect and cumulative manner.

Authors 3

1. Katharina Luckner

   Universität Hamburg · University of Copenhagen

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Law and Economics, Universität Hamburg, Germany

   iCourts, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

2. Anna Sekuła

   European Union

   Affiliation as printed

   European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights

3. Jarosław Kantorowicz corresponding Aachen Institute of Security and Global Affairs

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University, the Netherlands