Environmental justice: Mobilising constitutional opportunity structures to empower and protect vulnerable and marginalised groups

Over recent years national constitutional courts, the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights have become increasingly engaged with the mobilization of constitutional law and human rights law for the purpose of protecting environmental rights. This working paper explores the extent to which constitutional opportunity structures can be seized to promote environmental and climate justice through legal action, alongside (or instead of) action by political and social movements. The paper also investigates the growing use of human rights law to enable collective and transnational action to advance climate justice. The research objective is to evaluate the potential of national and European courts to promote environmental justice and to secure remedies that go beyond addressing individual harms with a view to promoting environmental and climate justice for all. The paper presents examples from different countries demonstrating how constitutional and human rights law can be used to achieve success in litigation involving environmental harms and makes a series of recommendations for the future use of public law mechanisms by litigants to develop a form of collective action for environmental and climate justice.