Biased Climate Classes for Judges
The climate lobby’s effort to influence the judiciary was exposed this year when their biased instruction turned up in the Federal Judicial Center’s scientific reference manual for federal judges. The Center withdrew the climate chapter, but the influence campaign lives on through the judicial education curriculum.
A report released Wednesday by the House Judiciary Committee documents progressive efforts to steer judicial opinions with tilted seminars on climate science. That effort is led by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), a left-leaning nonprofit that runs the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP). ELI says it provides “evidence-based judicial education about climate science and how it arises in the law.” But that’s not how it looks from the details uncovered by Congress.
According to the Judiciary investigation, the climate groups schedule judicial education programs to target judges in areas affected by droughts or wildfires. When nature causes damage, climate litigators file lawsuits blaming fossil-fuel companies for climate change, using theories like public nuisance or consumer deception.
One CJP curriculum module teaches judges about “Applying Attribution: Impacts of Climate Attribution Science on Tort Litigation.” “Detection and Attribution of Climate Change” teaches judges about supposed human influence on extreme weather.
In one email to a CJP Advisory Committee member in June 2022, CJP Founder Paul Hanle said his group “target[s]” states where climate cases are expected, according to the Judiciary Committee report. In testimony to the committee, Mr. Hanle said the purpose of the training is for judges to understand “its basis” and as a consequence “they would see that climate change is . . . real, human caused.” Few doubt that humans influence climate, but that’s a long way from saying weather events are caused by fossil fuels produced by specific companies when CO2 emissions are a complicated global issue.
Mr. Hanle told Congressional investigators that CJP didn’t directly invite judges to its events and that the Federal Judicial Center was “charged with inviting the judges.” But he was contradicted by internal documents in which CJP leaders discussed how to use “‘back-channel efforts’ to target states and key judges for upcoming climate-related judicial seminars,” the report says.
In a 2022 letter to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist Michael Wehner, Mr. Hanle wrote that “I’d like to tell you how we are going about reaching key judges, and I have a specific idea about attribution . . . that could make a great difference in the final outcome of cases.” Without “legislative or executive action to address the climate problem,” he wrote, “real government action might still be derived from court decisions based on scientific understanding of the consequences of global warning.”
This isn’t the unbiased musing of a neutral educator. Mr. Hanle told the committee he meant “reaching key judges” with the science so that “judges would make better informed decisions.” But CJP works with groups including Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, whose executive director Michael Burger has an of-counsel position at climate-litigation firm Sher Edling.
None dare call it conspiracy, but it sure looks like an organized, stealthy effort to influence how judges rule on cases. At least 140 federal judges have attended CJP judicial training sessions. That’s great for the growing climate tort industry, but treating climate ideology as settled fact is a disservice to the rule of law.