A symposium funded in part by ExxonMobil is teaching federal judges to apply skepticism toward climate science in courtrooms, even as a separate government-backed educational initiative faces congressional scrutiny and retraction of its materials—raising questions about institutional influence over judicial decision-making from multiple directions.
The George Mason University Law and Economics Center is hosting the "Judicial Symposium on Scientific Methodology, Expert Testimony, and the Judicial Role" in Nashville, which opened on April 29 and continues through Saturday, May 2. The event brings together 150 judges to examine how scientific evidence should be evaluated in court, with particular focus on climate-related litigation that has accelerated against fossil fuel companies.
Meanwhile, the Federal Judicial Center, the publishing body for the federal court system, retracted a roughly 90-page climate-science chapter from its technical manual for judges in February 2026—following a campaign last winter initiated by 22 Republican attorneys general who questioned the chapter's authorship and alleged bias.
Competing Visions for Judicial Education
The dueling efforts reflect fundamentally different approaches to how judges should understand climate science in litigation. The Climate Judiciary Project, overseen by the Environmental Law Institute, aims to educate courts about climate science. Conservative lawmakers and political operatives have alleged that this effort constitutes a conspiracy to influence federal judges and persuade them to rule against the oil industry.
On April 28, four days ago, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, issued letters accusing Michael Burger of Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, the Environmental Law Institute, and the law firm 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 coordinating to bring climate-related litigation to court, raising questions about "the integrity and independence of the judicial process" and "ex parte contact with courts." Jordan demanded that the three parties produce private communications, receipts, records of funding sources, and sit for interviews before the committee.
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." Neither Sher Edling, the Sabin Center, nor Burger responded to requests for comment.
The George Mason Approach
The George Mason symposium takes a markedly different tack. The Law and Economics Center, which runs the event, is funded in part by ExxonMobil, which is a defendant in several climate liability lawsuits. The conference includes speakers who have filed amicus briefs in favor of the oil industry in climate cases and at least one lawyer who has represented fossil fuel companies in court.
According to an internal fundraising document from 2020 obtained by ProPublica, the Law and Economics Center's gatherings are designed as luxurious all-expenses-paid affairs meant to foster lasting relationships and network opportunities with judges. The document stated that more than 5,000 judges representing all 50 states had attended at least one of the organization's programs by that time. The document outlined an explicit goal: to sway judges toward a libertarian economic viewpoint in their rulings.
The document stated: "The goal of this project is to expose judges to the intellectual history of the role of capitalism, economic freedom, and a constitutionally limited government as fundamental features of a liberal society," and to establish a community of like-minded justices "with synergistic effects on the judiciary as a whole" and to influence the outcome of cases that come before the courts. It said judges "urgently need to cultivate an understanding" of economic analysis and its relevance to the legal system if they "are to issue decisions that advance the rule of law and America's free enterprise system."
The 2020 fundraising letter also stated that the symposium would give judges "a rounded understanding and healthy skepticism of the invocations of 'science' that lurk in the background of lawsuits they are hearing," and help judges understand 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."
Funding and Institutional Relationships
The Law and Economics Center has expanded significantly since 2016, when George Mason University renamed itself after former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The center received $30 million in gifts at that time, adding faculty and scholarships and launching additional programs. According to the George Mason University website, the center's 2025 funders include DonorsTrust, a dark money pass-through organization meant to shield the identity of contributors.
Leonard Leo, a conservative activist, brought George Mason a $20 million gift, in addition to $10 million from the Charles Koch Foundation, which funded the expansion of the law school's program. A 2020 proposal from the center sought more than $930,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation.
The Retraction and Congressional Inquiry
The Federal Judicial Center's retraction of the climate chapter in February followed pressure from Republican attorneys general who questioned whether the chapter's authors appeared biased. The 22 Republican attorneys general wrote to Rep. Jordan, noting that the chapter's authors work for Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and alleged the chapter was influenced by Michael Burger, the center's executive director who works closely with the law firm Sher Edling, which represents several climate plaintiffs.
The Republican attorneys general also noted that some staff at the Sabin Center work with the Environmental Law Institute and the Climate Judiciary Project. Although the chapter had been peer reviewed and approved by the Federal Judicial Center and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, the center retracted it.
Jordan's letters escalated the inquiry. Jordan's office replied to the Environmental Law Institute's statement by reasserting the accusations in the letters it had sent.
Symposium Content and Speakers
The George Mason symposium features Philip Goldberg, a managing partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon and special counsel to the National Association of Manufacturers' policy lobbying arm, the Manufacturers' Accountability Project, which describes itself as "the leading voice of manufacturers in the courts." Goldberg authored a brief for the group submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court on a landmark case that the city of Honolulu brought against Shell, ExxonMobil and other oil companies alleging they misrepresented the risks of using their fuels and are responsible for climate damages.
Goldberg has also authored briefs in climate liability cases brought by the city of Baltimore against BP and other fossil fuel companies—a case won by the defendants in March 2026—and a case brought by Boulder County in Colorado against Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil. Lawyers from Shook, Hardy & Bacon also wrote a brief in favor of Chevron in a case brought by Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. The oil companies dispute the allegations and each of these cases is ongoing.
The symposium's assigned reading includes an article by Roger Pielke Jr., a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who argued that the true authorship of a significant part of the climate chapter in the reference manual was obscured. Pielke used the Claude artificial intelligence program to compare the chapter's text to a paper co-authored by Sabin's Burger and found a correlation.
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." The other author did not respond, and Burger declined to comment.
The conference did not offer readings from the climate chapter itself, which remains available on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine website, nor did it offer readings from the United Nations climate science authorities or climate-related readings from any peer-reviewed scientific journal.
In its final session, the symposium features attorney Matthew Wickersham of Alston & Bird, which has served as counsel for Chevron in several lawsuits. The only reading assigned to justices for that session is a paper Wickersham wrote in the Rutgers Law Record in 2025 about why attribution science—the field of study that makes it possible to link climate disasters to specific amounts of pollution and their sources—should never be admitted in court.
Donald Kochan, the executive director of George Mason's Law and Economics Center, said in an emailed response that the symposium is a robust and objective discussion and that the advisory board is politically and jurisprudentially diverse, including "some of the most progressive jurists in the country, including on climate issues." Kochan said lectures are by leading academics on science and law and 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 the climate issue.
Broader Policy Context
These developments occur as significant lawsuits seeking to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate damages move through the courts. 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 liability for climate harm. 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. The institute was funded until recently by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Why This Matters:
Federal judges are being targeted for educational influence from multiple institutional directions—each claiming objectivity while pursuing distinctly different policy outcomes. The retraction of the Federal Judicial Center's climate chapter in February, despite peer review by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, demonstrates how congressional pressure can override established institutional vetting processes. Simultaneously, the George Mason symposium, funded by ExxonMobil and designed according to internal documents to influence judges toward libertarian economic viewpoints, operates without similar scrutiny. The 2020 fundraising document explicitly stated the goal was to influence case outcomes and establish "synergistic effects on the judiciary as a whole." The question of institutional integrity extends beyond climate science: it concerns whether judges receive balanced educational materials or curated information designed to produce predetermined policy preferences. The competing efforts—one facing congressional investigation and material retraction, the other proceeding with fossil fuel industry funding and advocacy lawyers—raise fundamental questions about the separation of institutional influence, the reliability of scientific evidence in courts, and whether judicial independence can be maintained when competing interests actively work to shape judicial understanding of complex technical matters.