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"The idea that we're going to win any lawsuit is

Nov. 20, 2018 by Kenneth Newton

"The idea that we're going to win any lawsuit is not the idea that we have to win every lawsuit, but that we have to win every case, and that's what we're doing," she says.

It is a difficult task, especially for a class of highly educated, law-abiding citizens who have had to go through such a process. "I think it's important that we talk about the legal, the administrative, and the legal side of this case," she says. "As the climate change issue spreads, there may be cases where we can't just go through a lawsuit. There may be more, and there may be more lawsuit after lawsuits."

A 2013 study from the University of Wisconsin found that if a law fails to meet an essential legal function, litigation will not do. The study, by the American Civil Liberties Union, found that legal practitioners were more likely to fight than litigants due to an "unintentional delay in filing the litigation."

In the JAMA editorial, McCormick says that the study shows that the best way to avoid future litigation is to think about how you will go about it, rather than when you will get there.

"You won't find that in the civil cases, but you will find that in the climate action cases," she says.

The study also found that cases of climate change or other legal problems will be better handled by the court system, which in turn will have a much better chance of resolving the climate change issue.