Anna Maria Sekuła

Introducing social change via law faces challenges in the global context when multiple legal systems are involved. Thus, social movements increasingly use strategic litigation to promote legal reform domestically and transnationally. To study the dynamic of strategic litigation in the domain of climate change law and in the international context, an informal model of intermediary expressive effects of law is introduced here as a basic framework. The empirical comparative study of climate change-related lawsuits shows that strategic litigation increased in an aftermath of the introduction if the Paris Agreement across 36 jurisdictions. The results indicate also that the effects vary across jurisdictions and that the legal system adoption context is a significant predictor of those differences.

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