Oversight Project Releases Report Exposing Influence of Biased Scholarship on Judge
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 21, 2026
The Oversight Project released a report highlighting how the 2025 Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Reference Guide on Climate Science is infected with bias by left-wing environmental lawyers and scholars and calls on Congress to consider defunding the entities that published the Reference Manual. The report also highlights how the Climate Judiciary Project, a product of the Environmental Law Institute, has exploited their access and institutional credibility to predispose judges toward pro-plaintiff positions in climate litigation. These groups have undermined the neutral gatekeeping role judges are required to perform under Article III of the Constitution, the Federal Rules of Evidence, and longstanding Supreme Court precedent.
In December 2025, the Federal Judicial Center (“FJC”) and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (“National Academies”) published the fourth edition of its Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. The FJC is a taxpayer funded thinktank housed in Article III and the Reference Manual purports to serve as a neutral guide that helps judges make decisions in cases that are fact and expert specific. The FJC quietly removed the biased chapter from its version of the Reference Manual, but it still survives online on the National Academies website.
The Oversight Project’s report found that the chapter in the reference manual on climate science is the product of biased scholarship and puts the proverbial thumb on the scale of left-wing climate activist litigators.
Key Findings from the Report include:
- Guidance for Federal Judges for Evaluating Expert Opinions on Climate Change – The 2025 FJC Climate Chapter, published as part of a joint publication of the Federal Judicial Center and National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence—the standard guide used by federal judges to evaluate expert testimony—did not merely summarize background science. As a quasi-authoritative publication, it all-but directs courts to evaluate expert opinions by whether they were accepted by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) and similar left-wing bodies.
- Nearly a Quarter of the FJC Climate Science Chapter Literally Copied and Pasted from a 2020 Paper by Sher Edling attorney and Columbia Law Professor Michael Burger – Michael Burger, a Columbia Law professor and lead author of the 2020 paper The Law and Science of Climate Change Attribution, which was produced in connection with climate plaintiff litigation strategy. An originality analysis of the FJC Climate Chapter using iThenticate, a research integrity service, shows a 33% overall similarity index with other public sources; the Burger 2020 paper alone accounts for a 23% identical match in the FJC climate science chapter—indicating substantial copy-and-paste reuse of plaintiff-aligned scholarship inside a reference guide for federal judges.
- Lack of Public Disclosure of Michael Burger’s Sher Edling Employment – Burger is not a neutral academic reviewer. Beyond his academic work, Burger currently serves as Of Counsel with Sher Edling, the law firm that has coordinated and filed most of climate liability suits currently in active litigation on behalf of states, counties, and municipalities across the country. Burger’s name is on the complaints by climate plaintiffs specifically in Honolulu, Delaware, and New York City in active litigation against energy companies—the same category of defendants whose fate would be shaped by the judicial guidance his work informed. Yet neither the FJC nor the National Academies of Science disclosed that a lawyer actively litigating against energy defendants had materially shaped the guidance being issued to the federal judges before whom those cases would appear.
- Significantly Underselling Burger’s Role in the Climate Science Chapter – The chapter’s own acknowledgments understate Burger’s role, crediting him only with providing “insights and helpful feedback,” language suggesting peripheral peer review rather than substantive authorship. The scale of the textual overlap tells a different story: Burger’s work appears to have supplied a significant portion of the chapter’s substance, not marginal input.
- Jessica Wentz and Radley Horton’s Biased, Pro-Plaintiff Agenda – The chapter’s listed authors—Jessica Wentz and Radley Horton—are not disinterested scientists. Wentz, a climate law scholar at Columbia, contributed to curriculum development for the Climate Judiciary Project and had publicly advocated for rapid fossil-fuel phaseout. Horton, a climate scientist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, participated in CJP judge training programs while publicly calling for sweeping emissions reductions. Both authors, in other words, have institutional ties to an organization whose explicit mission is to train judges in climate cases, and have staked out public positions aligned with the litigation goals of climate plaintiffs.
- Misleading the Public on Climate Attribution – The chapter treated contested climate attribution science as settled. Climate attribution—the methodology used to link specific emissions sources to specific harms, and therefore central to establishing causation and damages in climate liability suits—remains a subject of genuine scientific debate. Rather than presenting that debate, the chapter endorsed contested attribution methodologies as established fact, deferred to plaintiff-favored “authoritative bodies” such as the IPCC, and omitted serious contrary scientific views. Resolving those disputes is precisely what the adversarial process exists to do.
- Substantial Overlap with the Federal Judicial Center and the Climate Judiciary Project’s Agenda – The campaign extended beyond the manual itself. The Climate Judiciary Project, a program of the Environmental Law Institute, runs seminars and training programs specifically designed to educate judges on climate science and law. This report identifies substantial overlap between FJC chapter contributors and CJP judge-training faculty, finds evidence that CJP funds were used to pay judges’ travel expenses to at least one climate seminar, and flags a conflict of interest involving a member of the FJC Foundation’s board whose law firm represented the State of California in active climate litigation against energy companies.
- FJC’s Stated Removal of the Chapter did not Resolve the Underlying Problem – After mounting criticism, the Federal Judicial Center notified the West Virginia Attorney General that the FJC will withdraw the Climate Chapter from its version of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. But the chapter did not disappear from circulation. It remains available through the National Academies of Sciences edition of the manual, which co-publishes the volume. Judges encountering that version would have no reason to know the chapter had been withdrawn, as it continued to appear with the implied authority of a federally affiliated reference guide and remained capable of shaping judicial understanding of contested issues in the very manner critics had warned about.
- Congress Should Consider Defunding the Federal Judicial Center and National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine – Your tax dollars are being used to fund biased, quasi-scientific propaganda documents that are aimed to improperly influence judges that hear high-profile climate cases. The FJC—which is housed in the federal judiciary—has received between $34 and $35 million per year in federal tax dollars since 2023. The National Academies relies heavily—between 58 and 70 percent of its budget according to reports—on federal taxpayer funds in a given year. Given the outrageous bias displayed in the Climate Chapter of the 2025 Reference Manual, Congress should defund these entities and return the hard work of judicial decision making back to judges where they belong.
Kyle Brosnan, General Counsel of the Oversight Project offered the following quote:
The 2025 Reference Manual’s Chapter on Climate Science is the subject of biased, left-wing pseudoscholarship. The Reference Manual exists to help judges answer tough questions on highly technical issues. By giving only one side of highly controversial and disputed topics in climate related litigation in a quasi-authorative guide, the Reference Manual undermines the important role judges play as neutral referees in cases and as gatekeepers in evidentiary disputes in cases. Congress should consider defunding these institutions because taxpayer dollars should not be spent pushing pro-climate plaintiff propaganda.
Read more on the Oversight Project’s Report in National Law Review here – https://natlawreview.com/article/venerable-reference-manual-scientific-evidence-becomes-engulfed-controversy