ABSTRACT
In the last decade, the number of strategic climate change litigation (SCCL) cases has exponentially increased. Despite this trend, the question whether SCCL as an advocacy tool can really influence public opinion using the law and the judicial system has yet to be examined empirically. This paper proposes the concept of legal cueing as a novel theoretical conceptualization to empirically analyze whether and how strategic litigation may affect public opinion. Legal cueing is defined here as the transmission of a normative legal signal underlying information on a court’s decision on a societal matter, which provides a strong indication that legal norms are shifting. We situate legal cueing within the law and social movements literature and operationalize the concept drawing on the experimental elite cueing literature and research on social norms from different disciplines. Finally, we make suggestions for utilizing the concept in future empirical work.
Kovács, Anna and Luckner, Katharina and Sekuła, Anna, Beyond Courts: Legal Cueing Effects of Strategic Litigation (August 31, 2022).
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