A project called the American Energy Institute has managed to break through and draw media attention to a troubling collaboration, the details of which CLW has revealed here over the past three-plus years, between plaintiffs’ lawyers, progressive donors and members of the federal and state judiciaries. That is the “Climate Judiciary Project” of the Environmental Law Institute.
CLW has previously described this as “the effort by the plaintiffs’ climate tort movement, unearthed by Government Accountability & Oversight (GAO) and Energy Policy Advocates (EPA), to brief federal judges on the plaintiffs’ case” with what they declare to be “the science” behind climate, with speakers drawn exclusively from the world of plaintiffs’ witnesses or historic amicus brief filers in support of the climate litigation complex.
GAO noted in October 2021, “This series to brief federal judges on the plaintiffs’ claims — not styled as such, but the speaker list tells the tale — was created by the Environmental Law Institute (on whose board and governance committee a then-consultant for leading “climate” plaintiffs’ firm Sher Edling, LLP [UCLA Law Prof Ann Carlson] served), after Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California dared ask for a tutorial on the science and then ruled (not on the science) against plaintiffs.”
Also, “Prof. Carlson was also a member of the board and the governance committee of the Environmental Law Institute when it aggressively moved, in the wake of federal court decisions unfavorable to the plaintiffs, to organize a series of briefings of the plaintiffs’ case for federal judges that is ongoing, according to a recent webinar (which the presenters asserted would be posted, if edited, at some point).”
The more detailed explication of how CJP occupied its initial host organism, the Federal Judicial Center (a creature of Congress, in the event any legislative oversight members are paying attention) is available here.
AEI CEO Jason Isaac announced the new report, titled “The Leftwing Judicial Ethics Crisis No One is Talking About,” in Real Clear Politics. The report, which can be found here, notes that:
According to its website, CJP has hosted events in jurisdiction where climate lawsuits are pending, including California, Chicago, Maryland, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. Press accounts indicate CJP has also “reached judges across the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th federal circuits” and hosted a plenary session for judges at the 9th Circuit’s annual meeting.
Prestigious venues have hosted CJP events, such as a 2023 symposium at Georgetown, and a federal-judges only workshop at George Washington University Law School. The National Judicial College hosted a CJP event on rising sea levels in 2023.
State-specific conferences include events for judges in California, Indiana, and Maryland.
CLW began revealing these machinations beginning in May 2021, offering details and documents showing how, e.g., ”public records from the Department of Energy in FOIA litigation brought by EPA shed further light on this. Here is a summary opening a window into one such session, embedded in this email. One of the presentations was by Climategate figure Ben Santer (Lawrence Livermore/Union of Concerned Scientists).” The presentations, and commentary by judges assisting with this project (below), are illuminating.
Energy Policy Advocates extracted more details from public institutions in the State of Hawai’i, including the flagship state university and the courts. These revelations are detailed here, here and here. Those judges, and others identified as leading this collaboration, should be nowhere near any of these lawsuits.
As the WSJ editorial board notes, “under the left’s ethics standard, every judge who attends a Climate Judiciary Project event should have to step aside from climate-related cases. Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse and his Senate sidecar Dick Durbin are trying to use ethics as a political weapon against conservative Justices, but watch out: It’s a double-edged sword.”
So what are we to make of this?
Very troubling. Congrats, AEI, for focusing on this and getting the word out.
Keep the public-education on this rolling. The more one knows about this latest occupation of institutions by the climate industry, the worse it looks.