OPINION:
A single-sentence letter from Judge Robin L. Rosenberg, director of the Federal Judiciary Center, to West Virginia Attorney General John B. McCuskey represents a huge victory against an attempt by a cabal of climate activists and bureaucrats to corrupt the American judiciary.
The letter informed Mr. McCuskey that the Federal Judiciary Center was removing a chapter on climate science from the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Fourth Edition.
The Federal Judiciary Center is a little-known research and education agency of the judicial branch of the federal government created to support “the efficient, effective administration of justice and judicial independence [by] provid[ing] accurate, objective information and education and to encourag[ing] thorough and candid analysis of policies, practices, and procedures.”
As part of its effort to inform the judiciary, the center periodically produces a science reference manual.
The Fourth Edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence included a novel section devoted solely to climate science, yet there was no section on biology, even though at least one U.S. Supreme Court justice proved unable to tell Congress what a woman is.
The climate change section was inaccurate and lacked objectivity. Worse still, it was written by activist lawyers and academics, plaintiffs, advisers and climate experts actively involved in climate lawsuits filed across the nation.
Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against multinational oil and gas companies across the United States by state and, primarily, local governments, as well as some private parties. None of these lawsuits should have ever reached the courtroom. The Constitution delegates to Congress alone the sole authority to regulate interstate commerce, which certainly includes the production and use of oil, gas and coal.
The successful effort by climate activists to poison the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence with climate propaganda posing as settled science, hoping to secure a favorable outcome in cases before the court, was so was so egregious that 27 attorneys general, led by Mr. McCuskey, sent a letter calling for the Federal Judiciary Center to withdraw the climate science section of its manual and ensure similar advocacy-based chapters are not included in future editions.
The letter notes that “the Fourth Edition places the judiciary firmly on one side of some of the most hotly disputed questions in current litigation: climate-related science and ‘attribution.’”
“Such work undermines the judiciary’s impartiality and places a thumb on one side of the scale … even as these issues are pending before the Supreme Court and other parts of the federal judiciary,” the letter states.
At least one author of the chapter had testified on behalf of plaintiffs in a climate lawsuit, and the chapter is filled with references and entire sections from the attorneys representing climate lawsuit plaintiffs and their preferred experts and legal theories.
This attempt by climate lawfare groups to train judges to think the “right way” about climate change may be over, for now at least, but a similar long-standing effort remains and must be defeated as well.
The Environmental Law Institute, a nonprofit advocacy organization that receives federal funds, has been hosting climate change education/litigation retreats and seminars for judges for more than a decade. Judges’ travel, lodging, meals and materials are covered. The Environmental Law Institute’s “mission is to foster innovative, just, and practical law and policy solutions to enable leaders … to make environmental, economic, and social progress.”
Judges, however, are not charged with innovating; they are charged with enforcing existing laws as they were written and enacted by the duly elected representatives of the people. The courts are not the place to develop novel legal theories in pursuit of social, economic or environmental justice.
The Environmental Law Institute’s training materials cite and lend support to research by the same “experts” and legal theories and positions the plaintiffs use in these lawsuits, including those in the recently withdrawn Federal Judiciary Center climate science manual.
The inherent bias in the Environmental Law Institute’s efforts has not gone unnoticed. The House Judiciary Committee sent letters to judicial groups and lawyers asking for detailed information on communications with the institute. The committee expressed concern that its efforts have, as Fox News wrote, the “underlying goal of predisposing federal judges in favor of plaintiffs alleging injuries from the manufacturing, marketing, use, or sale of fossil-fuel products.”
The Federal Judiciary Center manual and the Environmental Law Institute retreats undermine the integrity of cases and the appearance of fair decisions in pending litigation. Congress should bar judges from participating in future retreats and end further funding of the center unless it develops a system to safeguard future reference manuals from even the appearance of bias.
• H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., (hsburnett@heartland.org) is director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization based in Illinois.
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