The Climate Lawyer Who Has Won More Cases Against Governments Than Any Other Attorney in History

In June 2015, a Dutch attorney by the name of Roger Cox did something that had never been done anywhere in the world in a small, rather ordinary courtroom in The Hague. On the grounds that failing to do so would violate the citizens’ human rights, he persuaded a judge to order a national government to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by a certain, legally binding percentage. The Dutch government was incensed. The fossil fuel sector was concerned. Global climate activists sat motionless and read the decision twice.
In the Urgenda Foundation case, which Cox filed on behalf of the organization and about 900 Dutch citizens, the Netherlands was mandated to reduce emissions by at least 25% from 1990 levels by 2020. An appeal was filed against the decision. A court of appeals upheld it. The Dutch Supreme Court upheld the ruling in 2019 after it was appealed once more. By then, a new national climate plan had been implemented, and a power plant had closed four years ahead of schedule. The idea that a government’s failure to take adequate climate action could be a breach of its obligations to its own citizens, which had previously only existed as a legal theory, was now established national law.

Reference Links: Roger Cox — Paulussen Advocaten Why Climate Lawsuits Are Surging — BBC Future

Prior to the Urgenda case, Cox, who oversees a wide practice with an emphasis on what he refers to as social and corporate transition issues, wrote a book titled Revolution Justified. In essence, it made the case that there were already legal means of holding corporations and governments responsible for climate change. They simply hadn’t been put to use yet. The book was widely circulated among climate lawyers and activists throughout Europe, and its arguments, which were based on constitutional obligations, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the idea of duty of care, started to show up in cases filed in Belgium, Germany, and other countries. Cox did more than simply prevail in a case. He exported a method.

He returned to The Hague with something even more daring six years after Urgenda. A Dutch court mandated in May 2021 that Royal Dutch Shell cut its CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030, including emissions from the products it sells as well as those it directly produces. For the first time in history, a judge ordered a corporation to abide by the Paris Climate Agreement and held it legally liable for causing dangerous climate change. Shell promised to file an appeal. In the months following the decision, Cox foresaw a global “avalanche” of cases of a similar nature. Observing the years that have passed, that description seems to have been true rather than arrogant.
In 2021, Time Magazine listed him as one of the world’s 100 most influential individuals. In 2022, he was awarded the Dresden International Peace Prize. His contribution to the advancement of climate law as a practical field as opposed to an academic endeavor earned him an honorary doctorate in 2026. According to research from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, the total number of climate-related cases worldwide has more than doubled since 2015, with over 1,000 new cases filed in the six years after the Paris Agreement. At the start of that trajectory is Cox’s work.
It’s important to consider why the Netherlands was the first country to experience this specific legal revolution. Three factors have contributed to the rise in successful climate cases worldwide, according to Roda Verheyen, one of Germany’s most renowned environmental attorneys who successfully defended citizens in the country’s constitutional court climate case in 2021. litigation: because courts move slowly, cases that were filed years ago are now being heard; the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change is now practically indisputable in court; and governing law has advanced to the point where climate cases now have legitimate hooks in human rights frameworks. Perhaps earlier than most, Cox realized that all three conditions were coming together and that a strong case could run straight into them.
The results have been astounding. More aggressive CO2 reductions were required after a German constitutional court declared in 2021 that the nation’s climate protection act was unconstitutional due to its treatment of future generations. David Schiepek, a 20-year-old student from Bavaria, said he realized “politicians can be put under pressure and forced to take measures against climate change” after witnessing that decision. Law students are now suing their own state governments for specific sections of planned motorways using the legal framework Cox helped create. The reasoning has come a long way.
In contrast, there is a parallel story in American climate litigation that ends in defeat rather than triumph and may ultimately teach us the same lesson. Steven Donziger, a Jacksonville, Florida native and Harvard Law School graduate, represented 30,000 farmers and Native Americans from Ecuador’s Lago Agrio oil field for almost thirty years. Between 1964 and 1992, Texaco’s drilling operations contaminated the area to the point where it was dubbed the “Amazon Chernobyl.” The company dumped 16 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into rivers and pits, with contamination levels averaging 200 times higher than those allowed by US and international standards, according to evidence presented during the trial. The court granted Donziger’s clients $9.5 billion in 2011 following an eight-year trial and several Ecuadorian appellate rulings.
After acquiring Texaco, Chevron withdrew its assets from Ecuador and refused to make payments. Donziger’s supporters have characterized the ensuing counter-litigation campaign as one of the most aggressive in corporate legal history. An estimated $2 billion was spent by the company on attorneys, PR firms, and investigators. In New York, Donziger was the target of a RICO lawsuit. The presiding federal judge was a former attorney for the tobacco industry. He was testified against by a prominent witness who subsequently confessed to lying. After serving 45 days in prison and being placed under house arrest for 993 days—longer than any attorney in US history for a contempt charge—Donziger was eventually disbarred in New York and Washington, D.C. In a letter, twenty-nine Nobel laureates denounced “judicial harassment.” According to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, his detention prior to trial was unlawful.
Both of these tales can be held at the same time without being forced into simple moral classifications. Cox operated in a European legal system where his approach was supported by the institutional architecture, human rights arguments against governments had gained traction, and courts were responsive. Donziger worked in a jurisdiction where a corporation with virtually limitless resources could use the legal system as a weapon. The results were very different. However, at their core, both attorneys were testing the same underlying premise: that courts have the authority to declare that the harm caused by the extraction of fossil fuels is real, documented, and attributable.
Observing the global upsurge in climate litigation since 2015, one gets the impression that the question has changed. The question of whether courts can rule against corporations and governments on the basis of climate is no longer relevant. Many have already done so, and the decisions have been upheld. The current questions are how quickly those rulings proliferate, how much actual compliance they require, and whether the legal pressure they generate results in the kind of industrial transformation required by the underlying science. Since the Shell decision, Cox has appeared cautiously optimistic in interviews. According to most accounts, he is not a dramatic person. He constructs arguments in a methodical manner. He prevails in court. He then watches to see how his actions are viewed by the subsequent court.