Ep. 20: Corporate and securities law expert Emily Strauss on the potential and limitations of climate-related shareholder lawsuits

Financial Climate

In the last episode of this show, I had the privilege of talking with Elizabeth Burch and Adam Orford, two law professors from University of Georgia. They helped me to better understand many of the types of climate lawsuits that have proliferated in recent years.
But there are so many varieties of climate litigation that there’s a whole other category we barely touched on, which has special relevance to the nexus of climate and finance. I’m talking about shareholder lawsuits brought under corporate or securities law. As before, I wanted to talk with an expert insider, but someone who has more objectivity and a broader perspective than a lawyer immersed in pending cases.
My guest today is Emily Strauss. She’s a law professor at UC Law San Francisco. That’s the University of California law school that was formerly known as UC Hastings. She’s an expert in corporate law and securities and financial regulation, and some of her recent scholarly research spcifically explores patterns in climate-related shareholder litigation. I sat down with Emily to learn more about how these lawsuits relate to other types of climate-related shareholder advocacy and other types of climate lawsuits. I wanted to know what opportunities shareholder litigation might create to push corporations toward action on climate, and what limitations they may have as a tool for advancing environmental or social goals.
Additional resources:

• Climate Change and Shareholder Lawsuits (academic paper by Emily Strauss)
• Is Everything Securities Fraud? (academic paper by Emily Strauss)
• Climate Change Litigation Databases (Columbia Law School, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law)