Next Tuesday, the Supreme Court hears American Electric Power v. Connecticut, a case that asks whether America's climate change policy can be designed and managed by the federal courts. The answer should be a resounding no.

Hoping to force congressional action that would severely restrict greenhouse gas emissions, a series of lawsuits alleging "public nuisance" has been brought by various states, interest groups and activists. They claim that electric utilities and other large emitters of carbon dioxide have injured them by causing or contributing to global warming.

The case now before the Supreme Court was originally thrown out by a New York federal judge as presenting a quintessentially "political question" that only Congress and the president could properly resolve. Unfortunately, the lawsuit was revived on appeal. The judge who wrote that opinion later publicly admitted his hope that his ruling would hang as a "sword of Damocles" over Congress and the president, forcing them to act because of the obvious disruption to the U.S. economy caused by a lawsuit-by-lawsuit approach to climate change.

The Constitution does not permit judges to indulge their inner politician. Besides, there is a more fundamental reason why these lawsuits must be dismissed: Federal courts can only decide cases where the complaining parties have actually been injured by the defendants' own actions and an effective remedy can be framed in a judicial order. It is, as Justice Kennedy wrote for the court in a case decided earlier this month, "[c]ontinued adherence to th[is] case-or-controversy requirement of [the Constitution's] Article III [that] maintains the public's confidence in an unelected but restrained Federal Judiciary." Climate change nuisance suits fail this "case-or-controversy" test.

It is difficult to imagine a subject less susceptible to judicial resolution. Climate change is a well-established and natural phenomenon. The Earth's climate has changed dramatically over time. In the 19th century, for example, the northern hemisphere began to emerge from a period of global cooling known as the Little Ice Age. The extent to which man-made emissions like carbon dioxide may contribute to this process of periodic change, and to more recent warming trends, remains unclear.