Climate Litigation: the Impact on Civil Society. A Study on Climate Litigation's Impact on Public Opinion and Mobilisations

Climate litigation has emerged as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that increasingly shapes global climate governance. Yet, despite its growing prominence, systematic knowledge about its societal impacts remains limited. The CLIMPACT project addresses this gap by conducting the first comprehensive, large-scale empirical study evaluating the effects of climate litigation across jurisdictions. Integrating legal, sociological, and economic methodologies, the project analyses a dataset of 500 climate cases that span diverse litigation pathways and national contexts. Within this broader framework, this paper explores the sociological impacts of climate litigation using a multimethod quantitative-qualitative approach. Grounded in the triangulation of methods, the research conducted on clusters (cases with common denominators) investigates how civil society perceives climate litigation and how these perceptions influence public discourse, public opinion and civil society mobilisation. The analysis combines legacy media analysis (minimum four outlets per country) using TF‑IDF techniques to identify dominant narratives surrounding selected judicial cases, with civil society analysis across three levels (legislators, NGOs and individuals initiating or supporting litigation). Furthermore, on each cluster, the research will investigate how civil society perceives the impact of climate litigation cases. The methodology is applied to a dataset of selected and representative cases drawn from a global sample spanning North and South America, Europe, Australasia, and Africa. The findings will contribute to an international comparative understanding of the sociological impacts of climate litigation, offering new empirical insights into how litigation shapes public debate, mobilises actors, and influences climate action and governance. By systematically analysing these dynamics, the study establishes a new benchmark for evaluating the complex societal impacts of climate litigation globally.