Research Priorities for Climate Litigation 2026 Report

The report synthesizes interviews with 25 climate litigation practitioners to identify critical gaps in scientific evidence needed for legal accountability. It highlights ten research priorities, including advances in end-to-end attribution science, quantification of noneconomic loss and damage, and the impact of industry disinformation. The authors also detail barriers to integrating science in courts, such as the 'resource imbalance' between public-interest lawyers and industry defendants, the differing standards of 'certainty' between science and law, and political interference in the judiciary.

• The report identifies ten specific research priorities to support climate litigation, with a high demand for 'end-to-end attribution research' that can link specific emission sources to specific harms in a single study to establish causal chains for tort and human rights cases.
• There is a critical need for research that quantifies noneconomic loss and damage, such as psychological harm, culture loss, and intergenerational trauma, which are persuasive in court but currently lack established measurement methodologies.
• Litigators highlight a gap in research quantifying the actual climate consequences of industry deception and disinformation, specifically requesting counterfactual modeling to estimate emissions trajectories that would have occurred without such obstruction.
• The integration of scientific evidence is hindered by structural barriers, including a significant resource imbalance where industry defendants can employ 'armies of lawyers' to attack the credibility of individual scientists or the integrity of studies.
• Disciplinary barriers exist due to conflicting definitions of certainty; while scientists may require near-absolute certainty, civil law is often satisfied with a 'preponderance of evidence' (greater than 51%), leading to situations where scientific rigor is misinterpreted as legal weakness.
• Institutional barriers include political interference in the judiciary, exemplified by the removal of a climate science chapter from the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence in the United States.
• There is a systemic lack of independent expert witnesses in fields like marine science and mining engineering because many qualified experts have conflicting ties to industry.

APA

Phillips, C. A., Merner, L. D., Fencl, A., Walker-Crawford, N., & Yohe, G. (2026). Research Priorities for Climate Litigation 2026 Report. Union of Concerned Scientists. https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/2026-08/Research-Priorities-Climate-Litigation_0.pdf

Chicago

Phillips, Carly A., L. Delta Merner, Amanda Fencl, Noah Walker-Crawford, and Gary Yohe. Research Priorities for Climate Litigation 2026 Report. Union of Concerned Scientists, 2026. https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/2026-08/Research-Priorities-Climate-Litigation_0.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Phillips |first1=Carly A. |last2=Merner |first2=L. Delta |last3=Fencl |first3=Amanda |last4=Walker-Crawford |first4=Noah |last5=Yohe |first5=Gary |title=Research Priorities for Climate Litigation 2026 Report |publisher=Union of Concerned Scientists |date=August 2026 |url=https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/2026-08/Research-Priorities-Climate-Litigation_0.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{phillips2026research, author = {Phillips, Carly A. and Merner, L. Delta and Fencl, Amanda and Walker-Crawford, Noah and Yohe, Gary}, title = {{Research Priorities for Climate Litigation 2026 Report}}, institution = {Union of Concerned Scientists}, year = {2026}, month = aug, url = {https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/2026-08/Research-Priorities-Climate-Litigation_0.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }