The Children’s Lawsuits: Building a Global Movement in Law and Society

This essay describes the Atmospheric Trust Litigation (ATL) campaign, spearheaded by Our Children’s Trust, consisting of climate cases brought by youth premised on the public trust principle and, later, on express constitutional rights. The essay characterizes the cases as (1) accomplishing a “rights turn” in environmental law by invoking constitutional claims rather than statutory claims that previously marked almost all environmental litigation; (2) establishing a unified global framework of climate responsibility by depicting the planet’s atmosphere as a global public trust asset which all governments have an obligation to protect; and (3) galvanizing a youth climate movement centered on the right of present and future generations to inherit a climate system capable of sustaining human life. The essay urges treatment of all youth climate cases as part of one coherent field deriving from the shared foundation of government public trust obligation. This unifying theme draws together emerging jurisprudence in a way that coalesces rather than dissipates its planetary reverberations.