Bétaille, Julien and Chapron, Guillaume (2025) KlimaSeniorinnen case: Climate change legal scholarship needs empiricism, not hype. PLOS Climate.

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Abstract

In April 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in the KlimaSeniorinnen case that Switzerland had not implemented a legal framework capable of addressing climate change and that this constituted a violation of the right to private and family life. Despite being celebrated as “historic,” this ruling reflects established case law rather than a legal breakthrough. Hyperbolic reactions reveal a lack of empirical rigor in legal commentary, which undermines evidence-based climate policymaking. We caution against exaggerating the impact of individual rulings, given limited evidence of their influence on climate policies and emissions reductions, and encourage legal scholars to instead adopt methodological rigor akin to practices in other scientific disciplines. Specifically, we advocate for empirical approaches in law, through comprehensive data collection, robust statistical methods, and systematic analysis to better understand the role of courts in climate change mitigation.