Researcher ORCID Identifier
0009-0005-5826-5487
Graduation Year
2024
Document Type
Campus Only Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Environmental Analysis
Second Department
Political Studies
Reader 1
Melinda Herrold-Menzies
Reader 2
Geoffrey Herrera
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2024 Journey A. Lipscomb
Abstract
Courtrooms around the world have experienced a surge in cases brought by climate justice activists and organizations in the past decade, marking a strategic shift towards litigation within the Climate Justice Movement. Regardless of the verdict of a given case, a score of risks and rewards inevitably accompany judicial processes. While existing literature predominantly focuses on the likelihood of success for climate justice litigants, this paper aims to shed light on the extrajudicial effects of the litigation process. Drawing from Support Structure Theory, which identifies five forms of capital essential to movement success, financial, human, intellectual, social, and cultural capital become the variables through which I construct a theoretical framework to evaluate the process of Climate Justice Movement litigation and its potential to advance or hinder the long-term goals of the movement. Utilizing interviews and primary source research, I apply this framework to a legal case study, Harvard Climate Justice Coalition v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, where despite an unfavorable verdict, plaintiffs leveraged the litigation process as a tool for movement-building, demonstrating an instance in which the preconditions and intention of a lawsuit paved the way for its generation of radiating impacts irrespective of the final court ruling. Ultimately, this thesis demonstrates the importance of continuing to bridge the climate justice organizing and social movement litigation discourses to inform future advocacy.
Recommended Citation
Lipscomb, Journey, "Turning from the Streets to the Courts: Assessing the Extrajudicial Effects of Litigation as a Strategy in the Climate Justice Movement" (2024). Pitzer Senior Theses. 191.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/pitzer_theses/191
This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.
