A recent ruling by Judge William Carnes in Newport County Superior Court in Rhode Island raises important questions about judicial bias and the limits of judicial authority. In State v. Chevron, the Rhode Island attorney general alleges that dozens of oil and gas companies’ actions (from production to marketing and communications) bear responsibility for climate change; the suit seeks damages for rising sea levels, severe storms, and rising temperatures.

As an initial matter, the suit seems silly: attributing specific climate events to individual defendants is a scientific challenge that defies definitive causation. Carbon emissions are a global issue: 87 percent originate from outside the U.S. Even as U.S. carbon emissions decline, China alone has added more carbon emissions in the last 20 years than the U.S. produces by itself—even though U.S. GDP is more than 40 percent larger. Even if it made sense to assign damages to deep-pocketed defendants, how can it be fair to target companies doing business in the U.S. for alleged damages caused by carbon emissions while leaving Chinese coal plants untouched?

As the federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently recognized, the United States’ longstanding position in international climate-change negotiations is to oppose the establishment of liability and compensation schemes at the international level. Rhode Island might be happy extracting wealth from out-of-state corporations—but the state would balk if, say, Bangladesh used the same principles against Rhode Islanders’ use of air conditioning, automobiles, air travel, and hamburgers.