Climate Litigation and Atmospheric Ethics: A Case Study of Juliana V. United State

This thesis offers an account of climate change lawsuits as ethical experiments which endeavor to develop legal and ethical norms and principles suited to a world remolded by cumulative human actions. It offers a theorization of the 'what' and the 'why' of the growing, global wave of climate litigation by situating it within the dynamic landscape of contemporary climate politics. Through a case study of Juliana v. United States, a first-of-its-kind constitutional climate lawsuit against the United States federal government, this thesis examines how legal narrative is mobilized to give ethical shape and significance to the problem of climate change and to conceptualize responsibility across vast sweeps of space and time. Interweaving insights from climate ethics, environmental humanities, legal geography and science and technology studies, this research offers a set of meditations on atmospheric ethics.