But that shift in tone did not go far enough for many students. “It became more and more clear they were just reaching a dead end with the university and the administration,” said Kelsey Skaggs, a member of the group of plaintiffs.

The students’ legal arguments are unusual. In one section of their complaint, they invoke a tort, “intentional investment in abnormally dangerous activities,” that has no apparent precedent in law. Their other major legal argument accuses the school of “mismanagement of charitable funds,” and cites the original Harvard charter with the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1650 as well as state case law that allows those with a “special interest” in an organization to bring claims concerning mismanagement of its funds.

The students acknowledge that they may need a sympathetic judge to find that they fit within the legal definitions of those having a “special interest,” compared with the general population, and are thus entitled to sue. Ted Hamilton, a law student and a member of the student plaintiffs group, called their request a “slight expansion” of current law that “does not depart in any radical way from the course that the courts have been taking.”

A Harvard spokesman, Jeff Neal, said of the students’ filing, “We expect that a court will need to consider the legal basis of their complaint.” While acknowledging that “climate change poses a serious threat to our planet,” he continued: “We agree that threat must be confronted, but sometimes differ on the means. Harvard has been, and continues to be, focused on supporting the research and teaching that will ultimately create the solutions to this challenge.”

The students said that they drew inspiration from John Bonifaz, a graduate of Harvard Law School who, with other students, sued the university in the 1990s over racial diversity in the law school’s hiring practices. His suit was ultimately unsuccessful, but it was widely considered influential in nudging the school’s actions.