"Justice Elena Kagan told lawmakers she hadn’t read a chapter on climate science that drew objections from conservative attorneys general before writing the forward for a reference manual for federal judges.
Kagan was asked about the controversy by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) Tuesday while testifying on the Supreme Court budget. She said she didn’t review the climate section before submitting a four-paragraph introduction to an updated version of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence at the request of the Federal Judicial Center.
“The purpose of this book is not to really take positions on contested and contestable matters,” Kagan said. “It’s to assist judges with respect to scientific issues, but not with any kind of slant either way.”
Kagan’s introduction doesn’t specifically reference the climate chapter, or any chapter of the manual. It instead says broadly that modern judges will inevitably “confront lawsuits relating, for example, to artificial intelligence, climate science, and epidemiology.”"
Jordan Fischer reports for Bloomberg Environment July 14, 2026.
