As societies grapple with mitigating or adapting to climate change, law plays a prominent role in the social relations that constitute a response. In this essay, we briefly review of the many different perspectives on law and climate change offered by the authors in this special issue of Law and Society Review. From transnational human rights activism to constitutional litigation to local practices and all around the globe, both the powerful and the marginalized draw on legal institutions and actors in multiple arenas and at multiple scales to address the consequences of climate change. Together, these articles show that law is not confined to courtrooms or judicial systems or regulations; rather, law offers both limitations and opportunities in the ongoing struggle over climate change.

Our article offers an in-depth account of the role of the transnational practices of collaboration, storytelling, and learning in the diffusion of rights-based climate litigation (RBCL). Drawing on semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and quantitative data, we trace how the performance of these practices by lawyers, litigants, communities, scholars, and NGOs have fostered and sustained the transnational generation, exchange, and flow of resources, relationships, narratives, and knowledge underlying the field of RBCL. We argue that all three practices have fostered the diffusion of RBCL by influencing the local determinants of legal mobilization through enabling, discursive, and relational pathways. Finally, we show that these practices have had structural effects that have shaped the ideas and identities of the practitioners in the field of RBCL. Over time, the discursive and relational dimensions of practices have given rise to and have been strengthened by the formation of multiple communities of practice. The emergence of distinct communities provides the possibility for deeper forms of socialization and acculturation among their members, but they also make conflict and competition between different communities more likely. Overall, our article emphasizes the importance of understanding legal mobilization for climate justice as a set of practices that are shaped by the transnational social-legal context in which they are performed.

Mounting climate-related floods, fires, droughts and storms across the globe raise crucial questions about the role of law in adjudicating rights and obligations. While climate litigation attracts scholarly attention, vulnerable populations often lack the means to use formal laws and courts. We draw on ethnographic interviews conducted in 2022 in the city of Cartagena, Colombia, to study how residents of informal settlements exposed to flooding resist exclusionary climate adaptation laws. The findings show how formal law has exacerbated differential climate vulnerability, and resulted in “seawalls for the rich, relocation (and stalled adaptation) for the poor.” In this context, residents claim land in risk-zones through a local rule system known as “the law of the four poles.” We argue that by challenging the legality of the state, and creating a rival legal order that better represents locally identified interests and entitlements, they are claiming a political voice in climate adaptation. We advance theory in both climate adaptation and sociology of law and discuss how the law can better reflect not only the science behind climate change but also the interest and needs of marginalized communities.

Sociolegal scholars have long debated the effectiveness of legal mobilization as a strategy for achieving social change. In addition to evaluating outcomes of wins and losses in court, they have identified several indirect effects of legal mobilization on social movements. Mobilizing new rights concepts can increase support for a movement, divide its base, and create new political allies or opponents. A win in court might lead to rights being institutionalized but not enforced, and it can serve to demobilize a movement base. This article contributes to this body of literature by arguing that movement groups can strategically mobilize the law to engage in co-optation from below – learning about an agency in order to build more effective organizing strategies. Using data gathered as a participant ethnographer in a grassroots environmental justice organization, I show how organizers used meetings with state regulators to learn how the agency interprets and enforces environmental laws and adjust their tactics in response. This study also demonstrates the value of conducting in-depth studies of local legal contests even as we seek to understand the role of the law in navigating our most pressing global challenges.

As Chile embarked on a constitutional replacement process during its worst-ever drought, local environmental activists secured significant representation at the Constitutional Convention responsible for drafting a new constitution, and successfully integrated provisions on climate change and water protection. However, despite the popularity of these measures, the citizenry rejected the proposal. This article, using legal mobilization and constitutional reform studies, examines the dynamics of constitutional mobilization against climate change, presenting two major findings. First, the feasibility of constitutional mobilization hinges on the ability of activists to navigate the politics of constitutional change, as their tactical choices are crucial for enhancing the process’s legitimacy. Second, including environmental measures in a constitutional replacement process tie them to less popular provisions, potentially jeopardizing the entire process, delaying state action on climate change, and weakening activists’ standing. The data supporting these findings come from interviews with Constitutional Convention delegates, archival research, and participant observation. In a context where climate change is intensifying, this article underscores the unintended consequences and challenges of pursuing environmental goals through constitutional reforms.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), often referred to as the “World Court,” plays a central role in the field of international law. Despite the significance of this court, socio-legal scholarship has not examined the ICJ’s inner workings due to limited access. Drawing from field theory and organizational theory, this study addresses this gap by using various data sources including interviews, organizational documents, and publicly available texts from insiders. Based on this data, this article explores how the ICJ’s institutional context shapes its organization and the experiences of its actors. We argue that the ICJ provides a space that tightly connects institutional myths, organizational practices, and individual action. This tight coupling effectively mediates and manages differences among ICJ actors, fostering a stable practice of international law within a field otherwise marked by conflict. This enables the ICJ to produce and sustain a specific way of doing international law which has stabilizing effects in this field. By linking the macro level of the field – an area emphasized in prior scholarship – with a microlevel organizational perspective, this article offers a nuanced understanding of the conflicts and organizational practices influencing the ICJ’s operations and development of international law.

System avoidance refers to the tendency of individuals who are concerned about formal social control (e.g., incarceration, immigration enforcement, or the removal of children from their families) to avoid surveilling institutions that engage in recordkeeping. While this research locates concerns about formal social control in an individual’s sanctionable status, the laws, policies, and practices that generate the threat of formal social control vary across space and time. Drawing on theories of legal consciousness, this article posits that spatial and temporal variation in the threat of formal social control has differential associations with whether and to what degree individuals with a sanctionable status report involvement in surveilling institutions. Our empirical case is U.S. immigration policing, which burdens Latinos across citizenship statuses. We link individual-level data on institutional involvement from the American Time Use Survey with administrative data on immigration policing across state-years. Results from double-hurdle models show that Latinos in state-years with higher rates of immigration policing (1) are less likely to report involvement in surveilling institutions but, (2) conditional on any involvement, do not vary in the time reported involved. We evaluate variations by nativity, citizenship status, institution, and the presence of sanctuary policies that circumscribe immigration policing. We conclude that the threat of formal social control across space and time implicates the situational meanings of institutional involvement for subordinated populations.

A partir de 2014, a política brasileira foi sacudida pela operação Lava Jato (LJ), uma iniciativa anticorrupção centrada no direito. A LJ expôs um grande esquema de corrupção na empresa nacional de petróleo, a Petrobras, envolvendo seus diretores, dirigentes de partidos políticos e grandes empreiteiras. Para alguns, a LJ representou um marco, um novo capítulo na história do Brasil, promovendo o “estado de direito” e um desejo coletivo de “acabar com a impunidade” na política e nos negócios. Para outros, a operação enfraqueceu a democracia e o estado de direito, abrindo caminho para uma liderança autocrática sob o ex-presidente Jair Bolsonaro. Este artigo contribui para esses debates ao analisar a LJ como um espaço de produção de “consciência jurídica.” Empiricamente, examina conversas lideradas por procuradores da LJ no Facebook entre 2017 e 2019. A questão central abordada é: “Quando os procuradores e o público falavam sobre a LJ, sobre o que falavam?” Os resultados se alinham às visões céticas sobre a operação, sugerindo que as interações entre os procuradores da LJ e seus seguidores no Facebook ajudaram a co-criar um quadro cultural que conflita com o “estado de direito.” Essas percepções oferecem implicações para estudos sobre consciência jurídica e esforços anticorrupção.

A través del lente de la conciencia jurídica, este trabajo analiza la insatisfacción institucional en el marco de un profundo escepticismo hacia las instituciones formales, particularmente en el contexto de la sociedad chilena post-Octubre de 2019. El artículo busca investigar la relación entre la expresión de una profunda antipatía hacia el estado y la postura que los individuos manifiestan con respecto a la legalidad. El trabajo reporta los hallazgos derivados de 12 grupos focales categorizados por edad, género, y locación. Encontramos que, a pesar de los sentimientos negativos prevalentes que albergan las personas hacia estas instituciones, los participantes continúan usando el lenguaje del derecho, expresando su insatisfacción como derechos formales frustrados o por una falta de aplicación de la ley con respecto a las élites corruptas. Concluimos que la existencia de una brecha entre las expectativas normativas y el agudo rechazo por su incumplimiento por parte de actores institucionales abre una estructura de oportunidades para la emergencia de formas más autoritarias de poder estatal.