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Full-Text Articles in Law
Environmental Racism, American Exceptionalism, And Cold War Human Rights, Carmen G. Gonzalez
Environmental Racism, American Exceptionalism, And Cold War Human Rights, Carmen G. Gonzalez
Faculty Articles
Environmental justice scholars and activists coined the terms “environmental racism” to describe the disproportionate concentration of environmental hazards in neighborhoods populated by racial and ethnic minorities. Having exhausted domestic legal remedies (or having concluded that these remedies are unavailable), communities of color in the United States are increasingly turning to international human rights law and institutions to challenge environmental racism.
However, the United States has ratified only a handful of human rights treaties, and has limited the domestic application of these treaties through reservations and declarations that preclude judicial enforcement in the absence of implementing legislation. Indeed, the U.S. has …
The Environmental Justice Implications Of Biofuels, Carmen Gonzalez
The Environmental Justice Implications Of Biofuels, Carmen Gonzalez
Faculty Articles
Analyses of the viability of biofuels as alternatives to fossil fuels have often adopted a technocratic approach that focuses on environmental consequences, but places less emphasis on the impact that biofuels may have on vulnerable populations. This Article fills the gap in the existing literature by evaluating biofuels through the lens of environmental justice – including climate justice and food justice. The Article examines the impact of biofuels on the global food system and on the planet’s most food-insecure populations. It concludes that the laws and policies promoting the cultivation of biofuels have contributed to global malnourishment by raising food …
Bridging The North-South Divide: International Environmental Law In The Anthropocene, Carmen Gonzalez
Bridging The North-South Divide: International Environmental Law In The Anthropocene, Carmen Gonzalez
Faculty Articles
This article calls for a fundamental reorientation of international environmental law to bridge the North-South divide and respond to the ecological crises of the Anthropocene. Such a reconceptualization of international environmental law must be normatively grounded in respect for nature and in the quest for environmental justice within, as well as between, countries. International environmental law must directly challenge the relentless drive toward economic expansion and unbridled exploitation of people and nature rather than merely attempt to mitigate its excesses. An essential step toward such a reconceptualization is to examine the ways in which international law has historically engaged with …
Environmental Justice, Human Rights, And The Global South, Carmen Gonzalez
Environmental Justice, Human Rights, And The Global South, Carmen Gonzalez
Faculty Articles
From the Ogoni people devastated by oil drilling in Nigeria to the Inuit and other indigenous populations threatened by climate change, communities disparately burdened by environmental degradation are increasingly framing their demands for environmental justice in the language of environmental human rights. Domestic and international tribunals have concluded that failure to protect the environment violates a variety of human rights (including the rights to life, health, food, water, property, and privacy; the collective rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands and resources; and the right to a healthy environment). Some scholars have questioned the utility of the human rights …
Coal And Commerce: Local Review Of The Gateway Pacific Coal Terminal, Henry W. Mcgee, David A. Bricklin, Bryan Telegin
Coal And Commerce: Local Review Of The Gateway Pacific Coal Terminal, Henry W. Mcgee, David A. Bricklin, Bryan Telegin
Faculty Articles
This article examines the potential constitutional law issues involved in local review of the proposed coal terminals. It explores these issues in the specific context of Whatcom County's review of the Gateway Pacific Terminal. Part II provides a brief overview of the history of the Gateway Pacific terminal. Part III explores issues associated with the facility under the dormant Commerce Clause. Finally, this article concludes that there are few serious issues associated with Whatcom County's review of the proposal that would violate the dormant Commerce Clause. Moreover, Whatcom County will have a great deal of authority to approve or deny …
Saving The Puget Sound Wild Salmon Fishery, George Van Cleve
Saving The Puget Sound Wild Salmon Fishery, George Van Cleve
Faculty Articles
This article focuses on the prevention of future habitat losses. Part I explores flaws in how existing law deals with habitat protection and outlines alternative policies to improve it. Part II charts the decline of the Puget Sound salmon fishery and discusses the scientific support for the conclusion that habitat protection and restoration is a central element in restoring it. Part III considers how effective administrative action and related endangered species litigation are likely to be as means of protecting habitat. Since Native American tribes face very severe harm from the fishery's potential destruction, Part III also explores their distinctive …
The Global Food System, Environmental Protection, And Human Rights, Carmen G. Gonzalez
The Global Food System, Environmental Protection, And Human Rights, Carmen G. Gonzalez
Faculty Articles
The global food system is exceeding ecological limits while failing to meet the nutritional needs of a large segment of the world’s population. While law could play an important role in facilitating the transition to a more just and ecologically sustainable food system, the current legal framework fails to regulate food and agriculture in an integrated manner. The international legal framework governing food and agriculture is fragmented into three self-contained regimes that have historically operated in isolation from one another: international human rights law, international environmental law, and international trade law. International trade law has taken precedence over human rights …
The Global Politics Of Food: Introduction To The Theoretical Perspectives Cluster, Carmen G. Gonzalez
The Global Politics Of Food: Introduction To The Theoretical Perspectives Cluster, Carmen G. Gonzalez
Faculty Articles
In May 2010, the Universidad Interamericana in Mexico City hosted an international conference on The Global Politics of Food: Sustainability and Subordination. Sponsored by Latina and Latino Critical Legal Theory, Inc. and by Seattle University School of Law, the conference took place under the auspices of the South-North Exchange on Theory, Culture and Law (SNX), a yearly gathering of scholars in the Americas that seeks to foster transnational, cross-disciplinary and inter-cultural dialogue on current issues in law, theory and culture. Published in the University of Miami Inter-American Law Review, the conference papers examine the complex ways in which the …
A Prudent Approach To Climate Change, John B. Kirkwood
A Prudent Approach To Climate Change, John B. Kirkwood
Faculty Articles
Climate change poses large and difficult issues. The potential stakes are enormous, but there is vexing uncertainty about the likelihood of a catastrophe, our ability to mitigate it, the economic costs of taking action, and the desirability of doing so without the participation of the world’s rapidly developing economies. This article outlines a prudent response to these uncertainties. Given the state of the economy, it does not endorse high taxes or other severe curbs on carbon emissions. But unlike John Kunich’s article in the same volume, it does not suggest it would be appropriate to do nothing. Instead, the article …
Climate Change, Food Security, And Agrobiodiversity: Toward A Just, Resilient, And Sustainable Food System, Carmen G. Gonzalez
Climate Change, Food Security, And Agrobiodiversity: Toward A Just, Resilient, And Sustainable Food System, Carmen G. Gonzalez
Faculty Articles
The global food system is in a state of profound crisis. Decades of misguided aid, trade and production policies have resulted in an unprecedented erosion of agrobiodiversity that renders the world’s food supply vulnerable to catastrophic crop failure in the event of drought, heavy rains, and outbreaks of pests and disease. Climate change threatens to wreak additional havoc on food production by increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, depressing agricultural yields, reducing the productivity of the world’s fisheries, and placing pressure on scarce water resources. Furthermore, the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis are occurring at a …
Environmental Impact Assessment In Post-Colonial Societies: Reflections On The Proposed Expansion Of The Panama Canal, Carmen Gonzalez
Environmental Impact Assessment In Post-Colonial Societies: Reflections On The Proposed Expansion Of The Panama Canal, Carmen Gonzalez
Faculty Articles
Post-colonial societies endowed with abundant natural resources often under-perform economically when these resources are exploited as economic enclaves lacking significant linkages to other sectors of the economy. The Panama Canal, a symbol of Panamanian identity and a reminder of Panama's lengthy colonial history, has historically functioned as an economic enclave akin to the mineral extraction and industrial agriculture enclaves prevalent throughout the developing world. Based on a case study of the contentious decision to expand the Panama Canal, this article examines the ways in which the colonial legacy distorts the development planning process, and discusses strategies that might be deployed …
Environmental Justice In The Tribal Context: A Madness To Epa's Method, Catherine O’Neill
Environmental Justice In The Tribal Context: A Madness To Epa's Method, Catherine O’Neill
Faculty Articles
Many American Indian tribes and their members are among those most burdened by mercury contamination. When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set out to regulate mercury emissions from coal-fired utilities, it was aware that mercury contamination and regulation affects tribal rights and resources. EPA's inquiry, therefore ought to have been differently framed, given tribes' unique legal and political status. Specifically, EPA ought to have confronted squarely the impact of its decision on tribes' fishing rights, rather than consider these rights as a mere afterthought. EPA 's process, too, should have been differently conducted EPA should have consulted with tribes from …
No Mud Pies: Risk Avoidance As Risk Regulation, Catherine O’Neill
No Mud Pies: Risk Avoidance As Risk Regulation, Catherine O’Neill
Faculty Articles
Regulation in the environmental context has, until recently, been guided by risk reduction - strategies that require risk-producers to prevent, limit, or clean up contaminants. However, it has increasingly come to rely on "risk avoidance" - strategies that call upon risk-bearers to alter their practices and ways of living so as to avoid exposure to contaminants left unabated. For example, women and children might be asked to eliminate fish from their diets to avoid the risks of methylmercury contamination; asthmatics might be advised to refrain from going outside on "ozone alert" days to avoid the risks of ground-level ozone pollution; …
Fishery Conservation And Management Act Reauthorization: “A” For Effort, “C” For Substance, Madeline Kass
Fishery Conservation And Management Act Reauthorization: “A” For Effort, “C” For Substance, Madeline Kass
Faculty Articles
In one of its last acts of 2006, the 109th Congress passed the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006 (FCMRA), reauthorizing the nation's primary fishing law through the year 2013. The president signed on in early January 2007. Those involved in the reauthorization effort deserve kudos for achieving a successful bipartisan compromise, a relatively rare phenomenon in recent years. Congress also deserves praise for taking positive action towards improving existing law and for rejecting preliminary proposals designed principally to derail conservation efforts. Yet, in the face of unrelenting, catastrophic fish stock declines, it is unclear whether the …
The Perils Of Risk Avoidance, Catherine O'Neill
The Perils Of Risk Avoidance, Catherine O'Neill
Faculty Articles
This article illustrates that in managing the risks and responding to the harms of environmental contamination, there has been a recent embrace of strategies involving risk avoidance in lieu of risk reduction. Risk reduction strategies aim to clean up, limit, or prevent environmental contamination in the first place. Risk avoidance strategies, by contrast, leave contamination unabated. Risk avoidance strategies address the harms of contamination by requiring those whose circumstances or lifeways leave them exposed to alter their ways, thereby "avoiding" the risk. A recent turn to risk avoidance is problematic on several scores and particularly troubling from the perspective of …
Litigating Global Warming: Substantive Law In Search Of A Forum, Henry Mcgee
Litigating Global Warming: Substantive Law In Search Of A Forum, Henry Mcgee
Faculty Articles
In response to the obstruction by the United States of the Kyoto protocols and its subsequent agreements, American environmental NGOs and state governments have filed a range of lawsuits to force the current U.S. administration, automobile manufacturers, and regulatory actors to combat global warming. This essay first very briefly sketches some of the strategies by litigants to force compliance with Kyoto, an agreement which reflects nearly all of the international community's desire to schedule reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The essay then describes a strategy that perhaps is the most conventional in terms of international law, but requires a nation …
Risk Avoidance, Cultural Discrimination, And Environmental Justice For Indigenous Peoples, Catherine O'Neill
Risk Avoidance, Cultural Discrimination, And Environmental Justice For Indigenous Peoples, Catherine O'Neill
Faculty Articles
This article begins with the recognition that environmental justice for Native peoples requires attention to the interrelated cultural, spiritual, social, ecological, economic, and political dimensions of environmental issues. It observes, moreover, that “environmental justice requires an appreciation of each tribe’s particular historical circumstances and contemporary understandings, including each group’s aspirations for the flourishing of its culture.” It contends that some environmental decision makers and commentators have increasingly come to embrace “risk avoidance” – strategies that call upon risk-bearers to alter their practices in order to avoid the risk of environmental harms – in lieu of risk reduction – strategies that …
Transboundary Dispute Resolution As A Process And Access To Justice For Private Litigants: Commentaries On Cesare Romano's "The Peaceful Settlement Of International Disputes: A Pragmatic Approach", Henry Mcgee, Timothy W. Woolsey
Transboundary Dispute Resolution As A Process And Access To Justice For Private Litigants: Commentaries On Cesare Romano's "The Peaceful Settlement Of International Disputes: A Pragmatic Approach", Henry Mcgee, Timothy W. Woolsey
Faculty Articles
Professor McGee reviews Cesare Romano's The Peaceful Settlement of International Environmental Disputes: A Pragmatic Approach. Cesare R. P. Romano, of the New York University Center for Global Cooperation, argues for and advocates arbitrative processes as the most tenable means of solving transboundary conflicts over the impacts of environmental pollution as well as access to natural resources.
Regulating Environmental And Safety Hazards Of Agricultural Biotechnology For A Sustainable World, George Van Cleve
Regulating Environmental And Safety Hazards Of Agricultural Biotechnology For A Sustainable World, George Van Cleve
Faculty Articles
This essay first presents an overview of key legal principles that support sustainability. This essay then reviews the major alleged risks of agricultural biotechnology. It then describes the existing U.S. and European agricultural biotechnology regulatory system designed to control those risks. Next, this essay analyzes the existing U.S. regulatory system using sustainability principles. In the course of that analysis, this essay considers lessons to be derived from three case studies: the permitting of Starlink™ corn, the discovery of Mexican maize containing genetically engineered corn genes, and the possible permitting of transgenic salmon for ocean fish farming. This essay also considers …
Hacia Un Regimen De Responsabilidad Civil Por Dano Ambiental Transfronterizo, Henry Mcgee, Luz E. Ortiz Nagle
Hacia Un Regimen De Responsabilidad Civil Por Dano Ambiental Transfronterizo, Henry Mcgee, Luz E. Ortiz Nagle
Faculty Articles
This article discusses the importance of protecting the environment on a global level. In view of the gravity of the ecological problems, and the ineffectiveness of existing environmental standards of regimes that are purely national, countries and specialized institutions have concluded that it is imperative to implement international regulations.
Beyond Eco-Imperialism: An Environmental Justice Critique Of Free Trade, Carmen G. Gonzalez
Beyond Eco-Imperialism: An Environmental Justice Critique Of Free Trade, Carmen G. Gonzalez
Faculty Articles
The article contributes to the trade and environment literature by assessing the claim that industrialized country proposals to integrate environmental protection into the WTO trade regime constitute environmental imperialism - the imposition of industrialized country values and preferences on less powerful nations. This claim is usually based on two distinct premises. The first is that environmental protection is a luxury that poor countries can ill afford. The second is that wealthy countries have played a leadership role in the protection of the global environment. The article questions these assumptions. It argues that environmental protection is essential to well-being of the …
Restoration Affecting Native Resources: The Place Of Native Ecological Science, Catherine O'Neill
Restoration Affecting Native Resources: The Place Of Native Ecological Science, Catherine O'Neill
Faculty Articles
This article begins by noting that non-Native society—the dominant society in the United States—has often discounted Native expertise and denied a place for Native environmental managers. Part II catalogues the various forms that denigration and denial of Native ecological science have taken. Part III marks the historical antecedents of such efforts to deny Native knowledge and to downplay the role of Native peoples as environmental managers. It then identifies particular features of the approaches favored by non-Native environmental managers that likely work to exclude, devalue, or discriminate against Native science, with the intention of encouraging further work to locate and …
Variable Justice: Environmental Standards, Contaminated Fish, And "Acceptable” Risk To Native Peoples, Catherine O'Neill
Variable Justice: Environmental Standards, Contaminated Fish, And "Acceptable” Risk To Native Peoples, Catherine O'Neill
Faculty Articles
This article begins with the observation that “[f]ish, especially salmon, are necessary for the survival of the Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest, both as individuals and as a people.” It considers conventional approaches to regulating contamination of the waters that support the fish on which these peoples depend, and finds that the narrow focus on human physical health fails fully to comprehend the multiple dimensions of the harm to these fishing peoples. Importantly, this focus fails to appreciate the cultural dimensions of the harm. The article examines health and environmental agencies’ standard-setting practices and challenges their failure to account …
Equal Enforcement For All, George Van Cleve
Equal Enforcement For All, George Van Cleve
Faculty Articles
As a premise, there is no reason in this society, at this time, for individuals of any race or economic status to be involuntarily exposed to disproportionate environmental risks. This article argues that if there are disproportionate impacts and you want to do something about it, you tell the government to increase enforcement resources. You tell the government to make sure that there are no exceptions, and that the fact that an employer is a large, local employer and politically influential does not mean that it should get any breaks from anybody for any reason.
Economics And The Environment: Trading Debt And Technology For Nature, Catherine O'Neill, Cass R. Sunstein
Economics And The Environment: Trading Debt And Technology For Nature, Catherine O'Neill, Cass R. Sunstein
Faculty Articles
In this article, Professor O’Neill and Professor Sunstein first explore and suggest improvements in current debt-for-nature swaps, with the ultimate aim of defending the use of economic incentives and Paretian principles in the context of international environmental policy. Second, they examine some of the limitations of the exchange of debt for nature, and thus suggest an alternative exchange that overcomes those limitations. The exchange they envision is quite simple. Developed nations would transfer to developing nations environmentally advanced technologies, particularly technologies designed to increase efficient energy use or to replace non-renewable sources with renewable sources of energy. In return, developing …
The Changing Intersection Of Environmental Auditing, Environmental Law And Enforcement Policy, George Van Cleve
The Changing Intersection Of Environmental Auditing, Environmental Law And Enforcement Policy, George Van Cleve
Faculty Articles
This article examines the changing intersection of environmental auditing, environmental law, and enforcement policy. It will begin by reviewing the concept of environmental auditing and will then discuss sources of existing legal authority to require or encourage audits and their limitations. Next, the article examines EPA's existing audit policies and the rationale behind them. It will consider the relationship between these audit policies, enforcement policy, and voluntary disclosures of environmental violations, which has recently been reviewed by the Department of Justice. The article will then consider two alternative models which might be used to establish the role of environmental auditing …
The Deforestation Of The Brazilian Amazon: Law, Politics, And International Cooperation, Henry Mcgee, Kurt Zimmerman
The Deforestation Of The Brazilian Amazon: Law, Politics, And International Cooperation, Henry Mcgee, Kurt Zimmerman
Faculty Articles
This article discusses the Brazilian Amazon rain forest and its remarkable biological diversity. Many scientists believe the world's largest jungle serves as a regional and perhaps even "global thermostat." It is therefore essential that vigorous efforts be directed toward its preservation. This article will examine Brazilian attitudes toward its preservation, and possible solutions to the forest destruction with reference to domestic and international law.