Does the Future Have Standing?
Originally published on Legal Planet.
Climate change is not just a long-range problem; it's one that will get much worse in the future unless major emissions cuts are made. For instance, sea levels will continue to rise for centuries. But the people who will be harmed by these changes can't go to court: they haven't been born yet. How can their interests be represented in court? And even people now alive who might still be around in, say, 2100, will have trouble proving any injury is "imminent," as the Supreme Court requires for standing.
Current Supreme Court precedents recognize three possible ways to get future injuries into court. The first is to find a present-day, real-world effect due to a possible future disaster. In the Duke Power case, a citizens' group was challenging a federal law that limits the liability of nuclear reactors for major accidents. The law would only affect them directly at some unknown future date when (if) there was a major nuclear accident at the site. That date might be decades in the future or might very likely never arrive at all. Yet the Court held that they had standing. The reason was that, without the …
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