Emerging pathways in climate litigation: Transnational justice and the Global South

• Introduces the Latent Global South Docket as a framework for analysing transnational climate litigation. • Identifies the emerging pathways through which the Global South shapes global climate governance. • Demonstrates that transnational climate litigation acts as a dispersed yet powerful force advancing climate justice. • Reveals how cross-border cases expand corporate and state accountability for climate harms. The Global South asserts its influence in the global climate discourse, challenging entrenched power structures and advocating for equitable solutions to climate change. Climate litigation is increasingly being used as a tool to address climate-related harms. Traditional climate litigation frameworks narrowly define ‘Global South Docket’ as cases filed within domestic courts of the Global South, overlooking transnational cases that address harm in the Global South but are filed in international courts or Global North jurisdictions. To address this gap, we introduce the concept of a Latent Global South Docket , encompassing cases with significant ties to the Global South regardless of jurisdiction. Through the systematic clustering of 831 cases filed between 1994 and 2023, the study identifies the emerging pathways in transnational climate litigation that underline the critical intersection of climate justice and sustainable development.