As major lawsuits seeking to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate damages move through the courts, a symposium funded in part by ExxonMobil is teaching federal judges to view climate science with skepticism—while a separate, industry-backed campaign successfully pressured the Federal Judicial Center to retract a peer-reviewed climate science chapter from its technical manual for judges.
The competing educational efforts reveal a coordinated strategy by fossil fuel interests to shape judicial decision-making on climate liability cases. While one program, the Climate Judiciary Project, aims to educate courts about established climate science, a well-funded initiative at George Mason University's Law and Economics Center is hosting a symposium in Nashville that prioritizes business interests and questions the reliability of climate evidence in court.
The George Mason conference, called the "Judicial Symposium on Scientific Methodology, Expert Testimony, and the Judicial Role," opened on April 29 and continues through Saturday, May 2. It is run by the university's Law and Economics Center, which is funded in part by ExxonMobil, a defendant in several climate liability lawsuits. The symposium includes speakers who have filed briefs supporting the oil industry in climate cases and lawyers who have represented fossil fuel companies in court.
How Industry Influence Shaped the Judicial Manual
The retraction of the climate chapter from the Federal Judicial Center's technical manual illustrates how political pressure can override scientific consensus and institutional peer review. The roughly 90-page climate science chapter had been peer reviewed and approved by both the Federal Judicial Center and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine before its publication.
However, in a campaign last winter, twenty-two Republican attorneys general wrote to Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, demanding an investigation into the chapter's publication. The attorneys general alleged that the chapter's authors—who work at Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law—were biased because of their connections to climate litigation. They specifically cited Michael Burger, the executive director of the Sabin Center, who works with the law firm Sher Edling, which represents climate plaintiffs.
Despite the chapter's peer review and scientific credentials, the Federal Judicial Center retracted it in February 2026. On April 28, Jordan issued letters accusing Burger, the Environmental Law Institute, and Sher Edling of bias, conspiracy, and collusion. Jordan wrote that the Sabin Center is "producing materials to be used to bias federal judges about novel climate-related legal theories" and raised questions about "the integrity and independence of the judicial process."
A representative for the Environmental Law Institute responded that the Climate Judiciary Project "does not participate in litigation, coordinate with any parties related to any litigation, or advise judges on how they should rule on any issue or in any case. The goal of CJP is to provide judges with the tools they need to understand climate science and how it arises in the law."
The George Mason Alternative: Industry-Aligned Judicial Education
The George Mason symposium opened the day after Jordan sent his letters, offering judges an alternative educational framework aligned with fossil fuel interests. The conference features speakers with direct ties to oil industry defense. Philip Goldberg, a managing partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon and special counsel to the National Association of Manufacturers' policy lobbying arm, is prominently featured. Goldberg has authored briefs opposing climate liability claims brought by the city of Honolulu against Shell and ExxonMobil, by the city of Baltimore against BP and other companies, and by Boulder County in Colorado against Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil.
The reading assignments prepared for judges reflect the symposium's skepticism toward climate science. The conference did not offer readings from the retracted climate chapter itself, which remains available on the National Academies website, nor did it include readings from United Nations climate science authorities or peer-reviewed scientific journals on climate. Instead, judges were assigned a Substack post by climate contrarian Roger Pielke Jr., a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who claimed to have found evidence that the authorship of the climate chapter was obscured.
Jessica Wentz, one of the chapter's two authors, wrote to ProPublica: "Michael Burger did not write any of the text in the climate science chapter nor did he have any control over the content and scope."
Institutional Strategy and Long-Term Influence
The George Mason Law and Economics Center's judicial education initiative is part of a broader institutional strategy to influence judicial decision-making. According to an internal fundraising document from 2020 obtained by ProPublica, the center's goal is explicit: to "expose judges to the intellectual history of the role of capitalism, economic freedom, and a constitutionally limited government" and to establish "a community of like-minded justices with synergistic effects on the judiciary as a whole."
The document states that judges "urgently need to cultivate an understanding" of economic analysis if "they are to issue decisions that advance the rule of law and America's free enterprise system." It describes the symposium as designed to give judges "healthy skepticism of the invocations of 'science' that lurk in the background of lawsuits," claiming that "so much of what passes as 'science' for leverage purposes never has to face tests for rigor, reliability and quality in front of a neutral arbiter."
At the time the 2020 proposal was written, more than 5,000 judges representing all 50 states had attended at least one of the center's programs. The center has received substantial funding from fossil fuel-aligned sources: $30 million in gifts when the law school renamed itself after former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, including $10 million from the Charles Koch Foundation and a $20 million gift from Leonard Leo, a conservative activist. According to the George Mason website, the center's 2025 funders include DonorsTrust, a dark money pass-through organization often used by organizations tied to Leonard Leo.
Broader Campaign Against Climate Accountability
These judicial education efforts are part of a wider campaign to shield fossil fuel companies from liability. ProPublica reported in April that political operatives connected to Leonard Leo were coordinating an effort across 11 states to pass laws shielding fossil fuel companies from climate liability. In the past three weeks, similar liability waiver bills have been introduced federally in both the House and the Senate.
Last week, the Florida attorney general's office launched an investigation into alleged judicial influence by the Environmental Law Institute, which oversees the Climate Judiciary Project. Meanwhile, significant climate liability lawsuits continue to move through the courts. The city of Baltimore brought a case against BP and other fossil fuel companies, which the defendants won in March 2026. Other cases remain ongoing, including litigation brought by the city of Honolulu and Boulder County.
Donald Kochan, the executive director of George Mason's Law and Economics Center, responded to inquiries by saying the symposium is "a robust and objective discussion" with an advisory board that is "politically and jurisprudentially diverse." He stated that he invited the authors of the judicial reference manual to speak but they declined, as did several others he suggested would have represented more centrist viewpoints on climate issues.
Why This Matters:
The federal judiciary's understanding of climate science directly affects the outcomes of major litigation seeking to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate damages. When peer-reviewed scientific materials are retracted under political pressure, and when judges receive education primarily from industry-aligned sources rather than independent scientific authorities, the judicial process's ability to fairly evaluate evidence is compromised. The George Mason center's explicit goal—stated in internal documents—is to influence judges toward a particular economic ideology that prioritizes business interests over other considerations. This represents a form of institutional capture where public institutions charged with educating the judiciary are being shaped by private interests with direct stakes in the outcomes of cases. The simultaneous campaign to pass liability waiver laws, the retraction of the climate chapter despite its peer review, and the industry-funded judicial education program together create a coordinated effort to restrict access to climate science in courtrooms at the exact moment when climate liability cases are proliferating. These developments raise fundamental questions about whether federal judges have access to reliable, independent scientific information needed to fairly adjudicate disputes involving climate science and fossil fuel accountability.