Rights-based climate litigation with children as protagonists: a critical review of the literature

The last couple of years’ child/youth-led climate cases like Juliana v. US, Sacchi et al. v. Argentina et al. and the Duarte Agostinho case at the European Court of Human Rights have sparked the beginnings of a new sub-field of socio-legal child rights studies. The present paper systematically and critically reviews this emerging body of literature on rights-based climate litigation with children as protagonists. In addition to identifying a quantitative boom in these studies since 2018, the review categorises the literature in two main streams: a ‘legal and critical’ and an ‘activist, interdisciplinary and participatory.’ The former, emerging from the legal discipline, studies topics such as procedural obstacles for children, the intersection of children’s and environmental rights, legal advancements brought by these cases, and the legal usefulness of concepts like ‘rights of future generations.’ The second stream is more interdisciplinary and often involves young people and lawyers directly in research. It examines topics such as the changing role of children in society and children’s experiences of the litigation process. What the two streams have in common is an emphasis on children’s agency and capacities and, despite challenges, a hope in child/youth-led legal activism. In conclusion, the review welcomes an exciting new sub-field of research and suggests new angles which could mature and nuance the field, such as anthropological and sociological studies of litigation as a social practice, and philosophical studies on the new ‘childist’ understandings of climate justice that these legal cases are demonstrating.