Green Justice: The Right to a Healthy Environment

By Vinay Vingala

Edited by Alexandra Harbourt, Will Mayer, and Austin McNichols

Lagging action against climate change and its impacts has forced parties to act through judicial means. While plaintiffs were successful at proving Montana’s “climate change exception” under the state Constitution in Held v. Montana (2020), they could only gain a declaratory ruling in favor of their claims. Plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States (2015) face a similar shortcoming in their attempt to prove the United States’ inaction against climate change as unconstitutional, with their claim for injunctive relief denied. A deeper analysis demonstrates that the hesitancy of the judicial branch to enact tangible changes to climate policy is rooted in the historical deference of multifaceted policy decisions to the legislative and executive branches, leaving current cases to succumb to a ruling void of concrete action.