The rightwing US supreme court has climate change in its sights | Laurence H Tribe and Jeremy Lewin

The court is breaking with precedent, procedure and prudence to achieve the ultra-conservative majority's policy preferences

Granting a petition by several states and coal companies, the supreme court on 28 February will address what appears to be a technical legal question: does the Environmental Protection Agency have authority to calculate Co2 emissions targets for power plants based on mitigation techniques involving steps beyond the fence-line" of individual plants? In truth, the matter the court is considering implicates -and imperils - the federal government's power to fashion flexible solutions not only to global warming but to all manner of complex problems.

The stakes are higher still: by ruling on the case at all, the court usurps power constitutionally entrusted to government's politically accountable branches. Article 3 of the constitution limits federal courts to deciding concrete cases and controversies" about the rights of individual parties. Yet this case" involves neither a concrete dispute nor the specific rights of any of the challengers. Instead, it's akin to an exam question about the options theoretically available to a federal agency to address a grave problem. In answering that hypothetical question, the court will have arrogated to itself an unprecedented, open-ended power to reshape the nation's social and economic landscape - far in excess of its legitimate authority, as the foundational case Marbury v. Madison put it, to declare what the law is".

Laurence H Tribe is the Carl M Loeb University professor and professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School. His many books include American Constitutional Law, the most frequently cited treatise on the US constitution. You can follow him on Twitter @Tribelaw. Jeremy Lewin will receive his JD degree from Harvard Law School in Spring 2022