From rising sea levels and warming cities to more extreme weather and crop failures, climate change has already begun to have a measurable impact on the world around us. The United States and other countries have taken a variety of steps to combat climate change in the hopes that we might avoid the worst consequences of a warming planet. But with governments’ climate change policies have come collective action problems, controversy, and, in due course, heavy involvement of lawyers.

While the Stanford Law Review will not be able to host our 2020 Symposium, entitled Lawyering in the Age of Climate Change, in person this spring, we are thrilled to bring you a series of thought-provoking Essays from our scheduled participants addressing the role of lawyers in shaping our society’s response to climate change. Over the next few weeks, we will be releasing six Essays by both scholars and practitioners examining the many ways in which the success of fossil fuel reduction, renewable energy production, climate adaptation, and many other strategies to address climate change will be defined by lawyers’ advocacy. We hope you will join us in thinking about this issue that will increasingly shape our society in the coming decades.