The controversy surrounding the Federal Judicial Center’s (FJC) climate science chapter continues to escalate. The Senate Judiciary Committee has formally demanded that FJC Director Judge Robin Rosenberg explain how a compromised climate science chapter made it into the nation’s premier judicial reference manual.
In a letter sent Monday, Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Eric Schmitt, and Marsha Blackburn are seeking answers about how the chapter came to be, specifically regarding its review process and author selection.
Sen. Schmitt of Missouri also recently blasted the FJC’s ideological capture and “taxpayer-funded patronage network” in a detailed X thread, exposing how the organization partnered with climate activists to “educate” over 2,000 judges with biased climate science, and then snuck the activist-written climate chapter into the FJC Judicial Manual.
The chapter has dominated discussions around climate litigation since its publication in December, drawing sharp criticism for its subjective framing, before being quietly withdrawn by the FJC.
A Plaintiff’s Brief Disguised as a Reference Manual
The FJC exists to help federal judges navigate complex scientific and technical evidence. Its Reference Manual is supposed to be the gold standard – authoritative, balanced, and above the fray of adversarial litigation. The climate science chapter was none of those things.
The senators put it plainly:
“Instead of serving as a neutral and objective resource for federal judges and staff, [the chapter] read as if it were a plaintiff brief in a climate lawfare suit.”
The chapter was co-authored by Jessica Wentz and Radley Horton, both affiliated with Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, and reviewed by the Center’s executive director, Michael Burger.
The conflict of interest is stark: the Sabin Center openly describes its mission as developing “legal techniques to combat the climate crisis and advance climate justice.”
Wentz has published research designed to establish liability for energy companies and played a key role in the Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project – a program that has privately briefed more than 2,000 judges judges on climate litigation and is currently also under Congressional investigation.
Burger also continues to serve as Of Counsel at Sher Edling, the plaintiffs’ law firm behind many of the climate lawsuits currently working through the courts. Sher Edling itself is the subject of a separate congressional investigation.
What Congress is Asking
Beyond the authorship problem, the senators take direct aim at the chapter’s substance.
The letter charges that it presents disputed scientific claims as settled fact, relies heavily on politically mediated sources, and overstates the validity of computer climate models — while concealing that “there is not one correct climate model but rather, a huge number of models that generate wildly different climate paths.” In several instances, the Senators note, the sources cited don’t even support the assertions made.
The senators frame this as a direct assault on judicial integrity:
“Indeed, the Chapter is replete with ‘scientific’ statements, asserted flatly, that are clearly subject to modern scientific debate. These statements represent a naked attempt to bypass the FRE and to circumvent tests established by the federal judiciary in cases such as Daubert v. Merrill Dow and Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael by encouraging judges to rely on scientific assertions that have not undergone rigorous scrutiny from the bench.”
The letter also makes the case that the chapter was designed to influence judicial decision-making in a manner that is at odds with the federal judiciary’s mandate to apply the law based on the fact of the matter.
FJC Authors Get Back to Litigation Advocacy
Elsewhere, the Sabin Center is continuing to show its true colors as a longtime academic nexus that has publicly advocated for climate litigation against American energy companies.
This Earth Day, April 22, the Center will host its annual Climate Change Symposium where “litigation against ‘Big Oil'” and climate science are featured topics. Among the speakers is Michael Gerrard, the Center’s founder, a reviewer of the withdrawn FJC chapter, and one of the most prominent advocates for the litigation campaign from the start.
Also on the program: a senior member from the New York Attorney General’s office, whose high-profile climate lawsuit was dismissed in 2019, and the Executive Director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund – an organization founded with the support of Harvard professor Naomi Oreskes, a paid consultant to plaintiffs’ attorneys who has spent decades building the academic scaffolding for climate liability claims.
Bottom Line: The FJC’s climate science chapter was a coordinated effort to put a thumb on the scale of federal litigation. The people who wrote it, reviewed it, and continue to defend it have a direct financial and professional stake in the outcome of climate lawsuits against American energy companies.
Congress is right to demand answers. The FJC now has ten business days to provide them. Whether it does will say a great deal about whether the institution can still be trusted to serve the judiciary, rather than the litigants trying to capture it.
