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  1. Mar 2023
    1. He said he and Arkush “went through every possible objection” and found no legal barrier for prosecutors to raise criminal charges against companies that he said have lied about their knowledge of the danger of burning fossil fuels. “What’s really probably stopping them is that no one has done it before,” Braman said. “The level of culpability and the extent of the harm is so massive that it’s not the kind of thing that prosecutors are used to prosecuting.”
      • Quote
      • Title: Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Deaths

      • Author:

        • David Arkush
        • Donald Braman
      • Abstract

      • Paraphrase
        • Prosecutors regularly bring homicide charges against individuals and corporations
          • whose reckless or negligent acts or omissions
          • cause unintentional deaths,
          • as well as those whose misdemeanors or felonies cause unintentional deaths.
        • Fossil fuel companies learned decades ago that
          • what they
            • produced,
            • marketed, and
            • sold
          • would generate “globally catastrophic” climate change.
        • Rather than alert the public and curtail their operations,
          • they worked to
            • deceive the public about these harms and
            • to prevent regulation of their lethal conduct.
        • They funded efforts to
          • call sound science into doubt and
          • to confuse their
            • shareholders,
            • consumers, and
            • regulators.
          • poured money into political campaigns to elect or install
            • judges,
            • legislators, and
            • executive officials hostile to any
              • litigation,
              • regulation, or
              • competition
            • that might limit their profits.
        • Today, the climate change that they forecast
          • has already killed thousands of people in the United States,
          • and it is expected to become increasingly lethal for the foreseeable future.
        • Given the
          • extreme lethality of the conduct and
          • the awareness of the catastrophic risk
            • on the part of fossil fuel companies,
            • should they be charged with homicide?
        • Could they be convicted?
        • In answering these questions,
          • this Article makes several contributions to
            • our understanding of criminal law and
            • the role it could play in combating crimes committed at a massive scale.
        • It describes
          • the doctrinal and
          • social predicates of homicide prosecutions
        • where corporate conduct endangers much or all of the public.
        • It also identifies important advantages of
          • homicide prosecutions
          • relative to
            • civil and
            • regulatory remedies,
          • and it details
            • how and
            • why
          • prosecution for homicide may be the most effective legal remedy available in cases like this.
        • Finally, it argues that,
          • if our criminal legal system cannot focus more intently on climate crimes soon
          • we may leave future generations with significantly less for the law to protect.