Climate Change and the Public Trust Doctrine

Abstract

The public trust doctrine, an ancient canon rooted in Roman law and long recognized in Anglo-American jurisprudence, has been invoked in recent state and federal court litigation and citizen administrative actions that seek to compel the federal and state governments to confront the threat of climate change. The plaintiffs in these “Atmospheric Trust Litigation” (ATL) cases are young people who assert that a climate crisis exists and that their futures and those of succeeding generations are in jeopardy because of the failure of the federal and state governments to act expeditiously to protect the earth's atmosphere from the adverse impacts of climate-changing carbon emissions. In this commentary, I discuss the history and evolution of the public trust doctrine and efforts of concerned citizens to use it to move governments to address the crisis in a comprehensive, meaningful manner.