Educating Earth’s Advocates: A Legal Path Toward Climate Responsibility

As a former Hawaii Supreme Court Justice and a judge for over twenty years, it is apparent to me that the most important issue facing the judges of the earth is the emergency caused by climate change. Globally, a model program for lawyers to gain the skills to apply the rule of law to protect humanity from the climate emergency is the Jindal Global Law School (JGLS), OP Jindal Global University (JGU) and WWF-India LLM program in Environmental Law, Energy and Climate Change.

The Secretary General of the United Nations has said, “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator." There have been over 2,180 climate-related legal cases filed in 65 jurisdictions, including international and regional courts, tribunals, quasi-judicial bodies, or other adjudicatory bodies.

Lawsuits related to climate change have more than doubled over the last 5 years as litigants see courts as a way to force government and industry to take action to prevent global warming. In just the last two years, courts in multiple countries have recognized the right to a life-sustaining climate. The Supreme Court of India in April 2024 issued perhaps the most important of all climate cases when it decided that the citizens of India have a right to be free from adverse climate conditions.

Some places on earth suffer more than others. India and Hawaii are on the bleeding cutting edge of the climate emergency. India is burning out of control with searing, life-threatening temperatures, only getting worse. At the same time, the Himalayan glaciers that feed the Ganges are melting away. In Hawaii, as a result of global warming, our second-largest city burned to the ground, and 100 people were burned to death—and sea level rise is flooding our major city.

Institutional betrayal and climate anxiety are now commonplace among young people. Many have given up on governments that only pretend to be committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions while continuing policies that increase greenhouse gas emissions and produce poisonous air with Air Quality Indexes (AQI) regularly at hazardous levels exceeding 500. Rightful cynicism grows among young people who witness their governments— and the special interests that support them— satisfy their greed and lust for power by perpetrating a future of growing fossil fuel use, rising temperatures and collapsing ecosystems.

But there are those who do not give up on earth and its children. They do not surrender to institutional betrayal and climate anxiety. They have the courage and hope that empowers them to seek the transformational change necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and return the Earth to a healthy future. Courageous lawyers around the world have persuaded judges to intervene, to recognize and enforce the fundamental human right to a life-sustaining climate.

In India, dedicated lawyers of hope and courage join together in an extraordinary collaboration to fortify their ability to apply environmental laws to protect the environment for future generations. Led by the WWF-India Centre for Environmental Law and the Jindal Global Law School, OP Jindal Global University, the LL.M. program for Environmental Law, Energy and Climate Change empowers attorneys to participate in the highest level of environmental policy making in government, industry and civil society. The most current international environmental jurisprudence, together with attorneys and judges responsible for seminal cases around the world, constitutes the curriculum. Internationally renowned justices of the Supreme Court of India, such as Chief Justice Dhananjaya Chandrachud and Justice Madan Lokur, impart their acclaimed expertise.

It has been my great privilege to participate in the LLM program since its inception. It has become a signature model program for educational institutions globally. It is the antidote to climate anxiety and institutional betrayal for those who wish to save our planet using civilization’s most powerful tool for justice—the rule of law.

Enrol for the LLM programme in Environmental Law, Energy, and Climate Change Law (in association with WWF- India) at JGLS.

About the author: Justice Michael D Wilson has served as an associate justice of the Hawaii Supreme Court and as a circuit court judge for the Hawaii First Circuit. He is a founding member of the Global Judicial Institute on the Environment and an adjunct faculty member of the Jindal Global University Law School, Sonipat.

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