The Oversight Project released an astonishing report today claiming that the Federal Judicial Center (FJC) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) used its non-partisan credentials to tilt the scales of justice by inserting bias against the energy industry in ongoing climate change litigation.

The National Law Review received an advance draft copy of the Oversight Project’s “Undermining Judicial Independence” report,¹ which tracks in detail how the neutrality of the federal judiciary may have been surreptitiously undercut by special interests. The report alleges that the authors of a reference manual chapter on climate science—intended to guide judges on handling evidence in climate litigation cases—copied passages from an earlier academic paper that they co-authored with a Columbia University law professor. The law professor is allegedly part of a legal team representing plaintiffs in several climate-related lawsuits. Critics contend that it is a glaring conflict of interest that could have profound implications across dozens of ongoing lawsuits over the causes of climate change.

The Fallout from the Revised Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence and Its Controversial Chapter on Climate Science

The FJC is a research and education agency that is part of the judicial branch. The FJC’s governing board is chaired by the Chief Justice of the United States. The other board members are seven judges elected by the Judicial Conference of the United States, and the Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. One of its main missions is to provide accurate and objective information on a wide range of subjects to federal judges through education programs and publications—including the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence (RMSE).

For thirty years, the RMSE has been considered an essential and trusted guide to help judges reach an informed assessment of challenging evidentiary issues—“a ‘dispassionate guide’ to scientific disputes,” in the words of former U.S. Attorney General William Barr. On December 31, 2025, the FJC—in collaboration with the NASEM—published the fourth edition of the RMSE.

Updated for the first time in fifteen years, the revised RMSE included a new chapter on climate science. The RMSE and its climate science chapter immediately became engulfed in controversy; the RMSE’s standing as a dispassionate guide was called into question by critics, including those behind the Oversight Project report released today.

On January 29, a coalition of 27 Republican state attorneys general sent a letter to Judge Robin L. Rosenberg, Director of the FJC, stating that the guidance offered in the new climate science chapter of the RMSE would place the judiciary firmly on the plaintiff side in ongoing climate-change litigation.

The AGs demanded that the FJC withdraw the climate science chapter. They cautioned that the constitutional guarantee affording every litigant the right to an impartial and independent tribunal becomes meaningless when “the judiciary’s own research arm predetermines contested questions of active litigation.” On February 6, Judge Rosenberg replied by stating that the FJC “has omitted the climate science chapter” from the digital copy of the RMSE on its website. However, the NASEM continues to host the original December 31, 2025 version of the RMSE on its website, which still contains the climate change chapter that is the subject of the Oversight Project report.²

The Controversy Over the FJC and the Disputed RMSE Chapter Heats Up

The House Committee on the Judiciary had already begun investigating whether climate-change advocacy was attempting to guide federal judges. In a January 14, 2026, letter to Judge Robert J. Conrad, the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, the House Committee announced it was investigating the efforts of two organizations coordinating with the FJC. “Concerns about this coordination have drawn significant attention and rightful calls for scrutiny.” The letter asserts: “These efforts appear to have the underlying goal of predisposing federal judges in favor of plaintiffs alleging injuries from the manufacturing, marketing, or sale of fossil-fuel products.”

In March 2026, a Wall Street Journal editorial questioned the FJC’s neutrality, noting that it accepted financial support from a foundation that funds climate litigation across the country and that a law firm affiliated with an FJC board member represented California in climate litigation against energy companies. Because the NASEM refused to remove the climate science chapter from the RMSE on its website, the WSJ called on Congress to reassess the funding of the NASEM and the FJC— “the funding for polemical texts pretending to be neutral reference guides”.

Marcia McNutt, president of NASEM, took exception to the WSJ editorial and outlined the academic rigor and peer review process to justify its decision to keep the climate science chapter in its online version of the RMSE. McNutt emphasized that the chapter “is consistent with the current scientific understanding” and that the RMSE “was written independently from its sponsors,” like all NASEM reports.

Inside the Oversight Project’s Report

The Oversight Project report focuses on the question of whether climate-change advocacy has been attempting to influence judges who are, or may soon be, overseeing climate lawsuits.

In discussing the report with the NLR, Kyle Brosnan, General Counsel at the Oversight Project, spoke about the need to demand transparency from the institutions tasked with protecting judicial neutrality. Brosnan said that the public should be concerned that hidden interests are “putting a thumb on the scale and working the referee in very fact and expert-specific cases—particularly climate-related cases where facts are under strenuous scientific debate.”

The report outlines how the two authors of the climate science chapter—Jessica Wentz (Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law) and Radley Horton (Columbia Climate School)—failed to fully disclose their reliance on a 2020 paper that they co-authored with Columbia Law Professor Michael Burger. While Burger was thanked in the chapter’s acknowledgments for providing “insights and feedback,” the Oversight Project report documents a surprising degree of similarity between the two texts that it claims suggests a deeper collaboration between the authors. The Oversight Project had an independent originality analysis performed that revealed a 23% similarity match between the two texts. The report included highlighted sections of extended passages that “appear verbatim in both the Climate Chapter and the 2020 paper.”

In addition to teaching, Burger serves in an Of Counsel role with Sher Edling, “the law firm ‘leading most of the climate lawsuits pending in the United States.’” The report argues that the use of “plaintiff-aligned scholarship” was not sufficiently disclosed and that, in a reference guide that is meant to support judicial neutrality, this could be viewed as an attack on judicial independence.

The Oversight Project report contends that Wentz and Horton “have staked out public positions aligned with the litigation goals of climate plaintiffs” that do not fit with the stated position of the RMSE as a dispassionate guide. The report concludes that trusting a reference manual for federal judges to these two authors (Wentz and Horton) damages judicial neutrality.

Report’s Warning of “Outside Influence” on the Judiciary

The Oversight Project report warns that the FJC and NASEM are encouraging judges to effectively cede their decision-making responsibility to a reference guide that is pretending to be neutral. The report argues that what is being lost is the gatekeeping role judges are meant to perform as part of the Daubert standard, where a judge determines the reliability and relevance of expert witness testimony.

According to the report, outside influence threatens the first principle of the adversarial framework of the U.S. court system. Quoting Justice Scalia, the report explains that “the adversarial nature of American judicial proceedings ‘is designed around the premise that the parties know what is best for them, and are responsible for advancing the facts and arguments entitling them to relief.’” The Oversight Project cautions that if a “quasi-authoritative” reference manual essentially directs the court to evaluate expert opinions based on advice from “plaintiff-favored” organizations like the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the entire system is undermined.

Rebuttals in Favor of Retaining the Controversial Climate Chapter

A number of academics, jurists, and legislators have strongly defended the original decision to publish the RMSE with the climate science chapter included. Some have now characterized its sudden removal by the FJC as “censorship.” For example, in a letter addressed to FJC Director Rosenberg on February 27, 2026, a group of 16 Democratic senators and representatives stated their strong objection to the FJC’s decision to remove the climate science chapter from the RMSE: “This censorship of scientific information undermines the key role of this non-partisan guidance and must be reversed.”

Around that same time, Wentz and Horton published a point-by-point rebuttal, “Defending the Climate Science Reference Guide,” on the Columbia Climate School blog, rebutting the criticisms raised by the 27 state attorneys general. They disputed allegations that the chapter presents contested issues as settled facts or that the exclusion of contrarian viewpoints indicates a bias. More recently, Wentz wrote a letter to the editors of the WSJ, stating “my co-writer and I didn’t commit academic misconduct in our chapter for a federal evidence manual [RMSE].” In her letter to the editors, Wentz reminded the paper that the chapter continues to receive the support of leading scientific societies.

Recommendations to “Defund” the FJC and NASEM

The Oversight Project’s GC Brosnan asserts that the FJC’s removal of the climate science chapter will not fix the problem of climate bias in the judiciary, especially since its partner institution continues to make it available on its website. Brosnan states that “it’s really a half measure that doesn’t really solve the problem. I think it’s putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound.” While the bias may be covered up for some, many critics note that it still persists and threatens the federal court system, which is built on the principle of a neutral arbiter that weighs competing claims.

The real concern for Brosnan is that judges “have huge roles to play in these [climate-related] cases, and they’re really only getting one side of the story from a quasi-authoritative manual.” The report concludes that the way to overcome the assault on judicial independence is to revert to first principles—to go back to Article III of the Constitution and “return the hard work of judicial decision making back to judges where they belong.”

The final recommendation put forward in the Oversight Project report is to defund the FJC and NASEM to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not undermining judicial neutrality. It’s a position that continues to be discussed by legislators, most recently by Senator Ted Cruz, who wrote to FJC Director Rosenberg on April 13, stating: “it is difficult to justify the continued expenditure of taxpayer funds on an agency whose programming appears to reflect and forward a particular ideological perspective rather than balanced, nonpartisan discourse.”

Asked by the NLR if defunding is an appropriate remedy, Brosnan remarked: “I think at this point, the reluctance of the Federal Judicial Center to even admit they have a problem is alarming, and Congress should explore defunding this entity.”

Conclusion

This battle over the Fourth Edition of the RMSE is just beginning. Extreme rhetoric is now the norm with respect to both sides of the climate battle and the appropriate role of our institutions related thereto. The NLR believes it’s time for further independent investigation as to how the controversial climate chapter in the RMSE came to be, but without the hyperbole and partisanship.

Defunding the FJC and NASEM over the publication of a single chapter in the RMSE won’t correct perceived biases, nor will it address the real need to provide neutral guidance to the judiciary on scientific matters. Calls from Republican legislators or the Oversight Project to do so shine a spotlight on a reasonable fear but are unlikely to find broad support.

Similarly, attacks by Democratic members of Congress calling the FJC’s decision to remove the climate science chapter an act of censorship were also unconstructive—especially without knowing how the FJC arrived at its decision.

The ideal of a neutral judiciary has always been a non-partisan issue in American politics. As is demonstrated by the extensive fallout from the RMSE climate science chapter’s publication, and subsequent removal, transparency is vital.

The Oversight Project’s report makes an important point. The lack of full disclosure regarding the RMSE chapter on climate science—such as the purported unacknowledged research and funding streams that could suggest a conflict of interest—raises important concerns about bias. And having multiple versions of the RMSE available undermines confidence in our institutions.

In this regard, Sarah Tuberville of The Constitution Project said it well: “robust disclosure and enhanced transparency” regarding the operations of the judiciary advances the goal of maintaining the public’s faith and trust in the judicial branch.

Endnotes:

1. Oversight Project. (2026). Undermining Judicial Independence: How Climate Plaintiff-Driven Interests Improperly Influence Federal Judges (Draft report). The Heritage Foundation announced on May 31, 2025, that “The Oversight Project will become its own entity with the strong support, partnership, and backing of The Heritage Foundation.” The National Law Review did not independently verify the claims made in and underlying basis of the Draft report as of the time of this article’s publication. 

2. The National Law Review expresses no opinion with respect to the decision to remove or retain the climate science chapter in the RMSE by either party, but simply observes that the chapter was quickly removed by the Federal Judicial Center (i.e., after remaining online on the FJC website for about five weeks) and that there are now two inconsistent versions of the RMSE available online to the public. There appears to be no historical precedent for this situation with respect to the RMSE. The RMSE copyright page denotes “Copyright 2025 by the National Academy of Sciences.”

Update (April 21, 2026): The Oversight Project announced the publication of Undermining Judicial Independence. This article has been updated to include a link to the finished report.

Disclaimer: The views, opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed by the Oversight Project and the author of its report are those of the Oversight Project and the report’s author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of The National Law Review or its editorial staff.