Corporate climate litigation and administrative justice in Italy: a case law analysis

Climate change litigation has now become a global phenomenon. Alongside legal actions against states, there is an increasing trend towards legal actions against private companies that contribute most significantly to climate-changing emissions: the so-called ‘corporate climate litigation’. Businesses’ climate-impacting activities are often either authorised or, if illegitimate, sanctioned by the public authorities, with the result that, in many cases, the exercise of administrative power occurs either upstream or downstream of the business. Therefore, litigation often involves administrative courts. The paper analyses corporate climate litigation in Italy from the perspective of the administrative courts. In particular, we examine some cases drawn from the most significant global databases, analysing the nature and scope of this category of litigation.