In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Climate Change

30 Sep

[Erick Guapizaca Jiménez is an S.J.D. candidate at the University of Michigan Law School, a lecturer at the Universidad Internacional del Ecuador, and an Assistant Editor with Opinio Juris] Once again, the Inter-American Court stands at the edge of history with the Advisory Opinion 32/25 (AO-32/25). This time, the Court addresses a monster of our own making, climate change. Responding to...

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26 Sep

[Digvijay Rewatkar is an LLM candidate at Harvard Law School and an international lawyer with seven years of experience. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the views of his affiliations. This post was drafted before he commenced his course at Harvard Law School.] Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on the readers’ vantage point, the seabed...

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26 Sep

[Digvijay Rewatkar is an LLM candidate at Harvard Law School and an international lawyer with seven years of experience. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the views of his affiliations. This post was drafted before he commenced his course at Harvard Law School.] The Advisory Opinion (AO) of the International Court of Justice (ICJ)...

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26 Sep

[Monica Iyer is an Assistant Professor of law at the Georgia State University College of Law] Climate change-related migration is an issue very much in the public mind, and the question of whether it is legal to send someone back (or refoule them) to a place where they might face human rights harms because of climate change has become a key...

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25 Sep

[David W. Patterson is a PhD candidate at the Groningen Centre for Health Law, Faculty of Law, University of Groningen, and a coordinator of the Human Rights and the Climate Crisis Working Group of the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research.  Benjamin Mason Meier is a Professor of global health policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and...

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25 Sep

[Dr. Fabián Cárdenas is a Professor of international environmental law at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana] The decision of 23 July 2025, issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), displays the progressive yet cautious trend recently adopted by this traditionally orthodox tribunal. With the banners of climate change, the Court, also carry the flag of the progressive development of international law, providing...

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25 Sep

[Dr. Fabián Cárdenas is a Professor of international environmental law at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana] The Advisory Opinion (AO) issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 23 July 2025 portrays the progressive, yet cautious, trend recently adopted by this traditionally orthodox tribunal. With the banners of climate change, the Court also carries the flag of the progressive development of international...

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25 Sep

[María José Alarcón Santillán is an international lawyer and S.J.D. candidate at GW Law, serves as Counsel in the ICJ Advisory Opinion on Climate Change, is a CISDL Fellow, and Regional Co-leader at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. She has advised states on cases before the ICJ, ICSID, ITLOS, and the PCA. Erick Guapizaca is an S.J.D. candidate...

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08 Aug

[Donna Cline is a US-licensed criminal practitioner and lead for the Environment Mobile Justice Team at Global Rights Compliance, where she works closely with Ukrainian prosecutors to ensure accountability for war crimes. Julia Tétrault-Provencher is a Canadian lawyer (Quebec Bar) and international lawyer with the Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Mobile Justice Team at Global Rights Compliance in Ukraine.] Legal practitioners and scholars...

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29 Jul

[Fia Hamid-Walker is a PhD candidate in disaster jurisprudence and postcolonial theory at Melbourne Law School and human rights lawyer] Disaster means a calamitous event or series of events resulting in widespread loss of life, great human suffering and distress, mass displacement, or large-scale material or environmental damage, thereby seriously disrupting the functioning of societyArticle 3(b) of the Draft Articles on...

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28 Jul

[Sude Kınık is a senior law student at Galatasaray University] Introduction The ECtHR’s landmark judgment in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland, (“Klimaseniorinnen”) marks a significant moment in the judicialization of environmental protection through human rights frameworks. A key feature of this judgment is how the Court addressed the “drop in the ocean” argument—a common state defense in climate litigation aiming...

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22 Jul

[Erard de Schaetzen is pursuing a masters in public international law at Utrecht University] In March 2023, Vanuatu’s initiative led the UN General Assembly to adopt a Resolution requesting an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on defining States’ obligations regarding climate change, and the legal consequences arising from their breach. Since then, proceedings before the “World Court”...

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