How to Start an Online Elders Climate Court

Steps to Set up an Online Elders Climate Court via Zoom:

Can an Elders Climate Court be conducted virtually, using an online platform such as Zoom? Yes. Absolutely.

In 2018, the international judges who served on the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Session on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change in May of that year, were initially uncertain whether a Tribunal Session could be conducted fully online. By the end of that week-long series of hearings, though, the judges were pleasantly surprised and announced that they now enthusiastically endorsed the online format.

The judges saw the potential of Zoom technology to “overcome the economic constraint of limited resources which impede what should be a permanent, timely exercise of assessing, monitoring, preventing and transforming the universe of violations which occur in the present global scenarios.” They pronounced that the experiment of conducting online hearings had been “a resounding success.” They recognized the online format as “a flexible and powerful tool which could allow the [human rights] struggles of the communities of the world to become more globally and more timely known.”

That week of online Tribunal hearings was the first of its kind anywhere in the world and yet, despite what the judges called “inevitable but instructive” glitches, they saw Zoom’s online format as opening new possibilities for ordinary people to conduct human rights trials wherever they are needed.

Conducting Elders Human Rights Court trials online has the same powerful potential. The first interations will be experimental and may present unexpected challenges, but wisdom and creativity will find creative solutions.

Following are steps to help you get started.

How to Start an Elders Climate Court

Get together with a few friends, designate yourselves an Elders Climate Court and start planning a trial.

Decide which government (city? county? department?) you want to put on trial for not adequately protecting community members' human rights.

Gather other interested folks to be “officers of the court.” The group then decides who will serve as the judge, the prosecuting attorney or attorneys, the six to twelve members of the jury and, possibly, someone to liase with the accused government to help them get ready to participate.

Meet with any outside advisors who will be asked to help throughout the process, and determine the extent of their involvement and how they will help.

Smiling senior man looking at camera while using laptop at home. Handsome old man wearing eyeglasses working on laptop in living room. Portrait of elderly grandfather using computer.

Decide on the date for the trial.

Decide on the approximate length of time you would like the trial to last (two hours? four hours? a whole day?) and how much time will be allotted for each portion – prosecutor’s case, witness testimony, questioning of witnesses, defendants’ case, summations by each side, jury deliberations, announcement of the verdict and next steps, etc.

Write a short description of what the Elders Climate Court is and what the trial will entail. This will be the document you can hand to anyone interested in what you are doing, to the media, and especially to members of the government you will put on trial.

Identify one person to be the media organizer. Their job will be to connect with as many local media outlets as possible and invite them to cover the trial. The more media coverage of the trial the more influence your court will have.

Identify another person (or team) to serve as the “Technical Director” to arrange and handle all the audio, video, lighting and other technical components of the online trial.

Identify another person to serve as the trial’s “Director.” The Director’s job will be to make sure that all the steps of the trial are planned out clearly ahead of time, and during the trial the Director’s job will be to make sure that all the transitions from one stage of the trial to the next take place smoothly and as planned. The Director will also be the time-keeper, making sure that each trial stage keeps to its schedule and lasts only as long as planned.

Elders Court officers begin preparing their roles, arguments, written briefs, etc, and begin planning details about how the trial will proceed. Since the Court’s conclusion may require that the defendant government “prepare an adequate Climate Action Plan,” this is the time to think through what the Court organizers will consider adequate for such a plan.

While Elders Court officers are preparing, now will be the time to contact members of the defendant government, explain what you are doing and that the trial will be public and covered by media. You will then formally (in person and in writing) issue the government a “summons” to send to the trial a representative who will explain the government’s point of view and speak on behalf of its interests.

It will be important to practice first by conducting a dress rehearsal court session, maybe in front of a few friends, to work out any glitches.

On the appointed day for the trial, everyone prepares the location in their home and logs into zoom. It may be a good idea for someone, perhaps the Director, to very briefly introduce the event and explain how the trial will proceed. The judge then formally opens the court session.

During the trial, the judge’s role is to ensure that everything proceeds as planned and in an orderly manner. The prosecutor(s) present their arguments, call their witnesses, and make their case. The defendants (government representatives) do the same. Time is allowed for questioning witnesses.

When the prosecution and defense have completed their presentations, the jury members retire to a private zoom sub-room to deliberate and decide whether the defendant government should be found guilty of failing to protect citizens’ rights or has already done an adequate job of protecting those rights. If the defendant government is found not guilty, then the Court congratulates them and encourages them to work with other governments to address the climate crisis.

If the defendant government is found not guilty, then the Court congratulates them and encourages them to work with other governments to address the climate crisis.

If the defendant government is found guilty of failing to protect those rights, then the Court issues one or more formal mandates to the government. The mandate could require that the government enter into a restorative justice process with the Elders Court in which the Elders Court and the government explore together what the government should do to best restore a sense that justice will be done and its human rights obligationswill be met. Or it could require the government to formally declare a climate emergency, develop a science-based and human-rights-informed Climate Action Plan and submit it to the Court by a specific date, or any of the other possible mandates suggested in the Youth Climate Courts book.

The judge then closes the formal court proceedings; the Director announces that the trial has concluded and explains what the follow-up steps will be.