Enforcing Constitutional Sustainability Clauses in the Age of the Climate Crisis: Insights from Social Contract Theory on How to Take Account of Future Generations

Abstract Climate change is one of the most alarming events today, which will very likely have devastating effects on a lot of people worldwide. This paper addresses the question as to how constitutional sustainability clauses can be enforced in the age of the climate crisis. It does so by looking into some difficulties of making the notion of future generations operable. First, the paper will briefly analyze two decisions by the Austrian Constitutional Court and the Norwegian Supreme Court, which have both rejected claims based on constitutional sustainability clauses referring to future generations. This is juxtaposed with a recent decision by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany which invigorated Article 20a of the German Basic Law and thereby also future generations. Second, this paper aims at shedding light on the notion of future generations by looking into philosophical debates on the so-called non-identity problem. The question as to how to include future generations in the social contract and selected philosophical strategies to address it are discussed and introduced to the legal discourse. This seems to be a worthwhile goal as by now several scholars from various disciplines such as geography, political science, and applied ecology have opened up a debate on the role of social contracts concerning climate change. This paper seeks to further the debate by aiming to suggest a connection between philosophical social contract reasoning and constitutional sustainability clauses taking the example of Austria, Norway, and Germany.