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Weaver, R. Henry; Kysar, Douglas A. --- "Tort law and normative rupture" [2018] ELECD 505; in Lyster, Rosemary; Verchick, R.M. Robert (eds), "Research Handbook on Climate Disaster Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018) 315

Book Title: Research Handbook on Climate Disaster Law

Editor(s): Lyster, Rosemary; Verchick, R.M. Robert

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781786430021

Section: Chapter 17

Section Title: Tort law and normative rupture

Author(s): Weaver, R. Henry; Kysar, Douglas A.

Number of pages: 17

Abstract/Description:

Do we court disaster by stretching the bounds of judicial authority to address problems of massive scale and complexity? Or does disaster lie in refusing to engage the jurisgenerative potential of courts in a domain of such vast significance? This chapter examines global climate change tort adjudication to shed light on these questions, focusing particularly on cases that seek to invoke the norm articulation and enforcement functions of courts. The attempt to configure climate-related harms within such substantive frameworks as tort law is fraught with analytical and practical difficulties. Yet the exercise, we argue, is essential. Against the backdrop of a potentially existential threat, judges redeem the very possibility of law when they forthrightly confront the merits of climate lawsuits. Conversely, when they use weak preliminary and procedural maneuvers to avoid such confrontation, judges reinforce a sense of law’s disappearance into the maw of normative rupture.