On Pajamas Media, Marlo Lewis highlights the baleful implications of a pending Supreme Court ruling, which “would be a boon to ambulance chasers both at home and abroad but a bane to the U.S. economy. It would also further erode our constitutional system of democratic accountability.”

But as bad as that is: “In addition, climate policy would be made by persons even less accountable than the non-elected bureaucrats at EPA, who at least depend on congressional appropriations for their budgets and salaries. We would have to live under Kyoto-like energy-suppression mandates imposed neither by Congress nor by EPA but by trial lawyers and activist judges appointed for life.”

The result, with its inherent tendency towards “bellum omnium contra omnes”: “Like the politicians who assured an earlier generation of Americans that the income tax would apply only to the super rich, plaintiffs in Connecticut v. AEP say they just want to compel the nation’s biggest coal-burning utilities to cut their emissions. However, once the precedent is established, there can be no principled basis for shielding any class of emitters from tort claims.” [Emphasis added]

Lewis’s article — “Will the Supreme Court Empower Trial Lawyers to ‘Legislate’ Climate Policy?” — is here.