Litigation against corporations has become an established part of the movement to regulate business activity to promote social and environmental sustainability. A “new wave” of climate litigation has recently joined an “expanding web of potential liability” for companies involved in human rights abuses. As might be expected, the literature on corporate accountability tends to focus on the main legal challenges to counter corporate litigation, such as jurisdiction or modes of liability. Less attention has been paid to how this growing body of litigation fits into our understandings of ‘strategic litigation’, ‘cause lawyering’ or ‘lawfare’. Based on a taxonomy of climate and human rights cases involving business entities (Taylor, forthcoming), the paper considers the question, ‘What is strategic about counter corporate litigation’? By thinking about counter corporate litigation as strategic litigation, the paper aims to provide insights of use to practitioners and regulators, as well as to identify topics for law reform. The paper is based on research conducted as part of the SMART project at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo.
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