Digital Commons Network^™

Forever Chemicals Are Infiltrating America, And The Nation Is Letting Impoverished And Marginalized Communities Take The Brunt Of The Contamination, Elizabeth Troutman

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Amended Expert Disclosure Report: Navahine V. Dept. Of Transportation, State Of Hawai’I, Catherine Smith

Scholarly Articles

From a historical and sociological legal perspective, children in America, including in Hawai'i, require extraordinary legal protection from the harm of climate change and the government actions causing them harm. Hawai'i has a long history and tradition of leading the way on broadening rights and protections under state law, particularly for children. The principles of intergenerational justice and equity at the heart of the public trust doctrine in Hawai'i similarly require that courts accord special attention and protection for children.

On June 20, 2024, the youth-powered Navahine case settled, resulting in the first constitutional climate settlement of its kind in …

Negotiating Environmental Justice In Ukraine, Paul R. Williams, Sindija Beta

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

This Article examines the dynamics of negotiating environmental justice in Ukraine amid pressure from certain international actors for an Amnesty-Based Peace in Ukraine. While it is currently unclear how Russia’s war in Ukraine will end, it is likely that there will be significant discussion around forms of justice, including how to address the grave environmental damage Russia has caused in Ukraine. This Article looks at previous precedents of Amnesty-Based Peace in Angola, Haiti, and Uganda and decisions and commentaries by international actors to argue that appeasement has not fostered durable peace and is generally disfavored by judicial and non-judicial bodies. …

Closing The Renter-Sized Gap In The Inflation Reduction Act: How Housing Policy Can Help Climate Legislation Achieve Environmental Justice, Madison M. Schettler

Connecticut Law Review

The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August 2022 was an important step forward in American climate policy. The Act is essential to the United States’ goal of effective climate change mitigation efforts, and other countries have even begun to use it as a model for climate mitigation. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides the framework by which the United States will transition away from fossil fuels and move towards an energy grid powered predominantly by renewable sources. For the first time, the Act addresses head-on the climate and environmental injustices that exist in the United States due …

Debts And Desertion: Bankruptcy Law And The Orphan Well Crisis

Fordham Environmental Law Review

The issue of orphan wells—unplugged and unproductive oil and

gas wells with no responsible operator—poses a significant

environmental and public health threat in the United States. The scale

of this crisis is alarming: there are over 120,000 documented orphan

wells and potentially millions more undocumented. These wells are

often significant sources of methane emissions and other toxins that

exacerbate climate change and endanger the health of surrounding

communities. This paper examines the orphan well crisis, exploring

how wells become orphaned and the environmental and health

impacts associated with them. Furthermore, it delves into how the

situation is likely to worsen …

Corn War: A Trade Fight Between The United States And Mexico, Ernesto Hernández-López

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

An international fight grows over corn. The United States claims that México’s ban on genetically modified (GMO) corn violates the United StatesMexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). México prohibits GMO corn for human consumption. American arguments focus on Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures, covered in Chapter 9 of the USMCA. A trade panel will review these.

This Essay first describes SPS arguments and relevant trade rules. The United States’ complaints emphasize that México’s ban is excessive, is not consistent with international standards, and mishandles risks. Second, the Essay identifies the obstacles American positions face: weak mandates and deference to México. Chapter 9 of …

Pollution Discrimination: The Epa’S Utilization Of Title Vi Of The Civil Rights Act To Bring Justice To Overburdened African American Communities, Lindsay Bates

Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, & Natural Resources Law

No abstract provided.

Corporate Climate Litigation And Environmental Justice: How Green Amendments Can Be Used To Advance Accountability And Equity, Noah Hines

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

The term “Green Amendment” was first coined by author Maya van Rossum in her 2017 book The Green Amendment: Securing Our Right to a Healthy Environment, in which she argues that modern environmental protection laws are fundamentally failing the most vulnerable people in society and proposes the creation of new constitutional rights as a solution. The provisions van Rossum argues ought to be added to state constitutions as “Green Amendments” are also sometimes called “Environmental Rights Amendments,” and generally enumerate the right of all citizens to a clean or healthy environment. Green Amendments currently exist in Pennsylvania, Montana, Illinois, Hawaii, …

Virtual Energy, Joel B. Eisen, Felix Mormann, Heather E. Payne

Faculty Scholarship

From employment to education, many areas of our daily lives have gone virtual, including the virtual workplace and virtual classes. By comparison, the way we generate, deliver, and consume electricity is an anachronism. And the electric industry’s outdated business model and regulatory framework are failing. For the last century-and-a-half, we have relied on ever larger power plants to generate the electricity we consume, often hundreds of miles away from the point of production. But the outsized carbon footprint of these power plants and the need to transmit their output over long distances threaten the electric grid’s reliability, affordability, and long-term …

An International Law Framework For Climate-Aligned Investment Governance, Martin Dietrich Brauch, Elena Klonsky, Fanny Marie Everard, Qiaozi Guanglin, Tyler Alviano, Justin Cuddihey, Mary Wang

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

The January 2024 CCSI Working Paper, An International Law Framework for Climate-Aligned Investment Governance, outlines a framework — and invites and hopes to inspire further thinking, research, and discussion — on how to bridge gaps and build cohesion among various areas of international law relevant to investment in climate mitigation and adaptation. The working paper identifies areas of international law that are or could be relevant to investment governance, highlights points of inconsistency, and proposes a framework to reform and integrate international law with the objective of promoting and facilitating climate investment flows and achieving climate-aligned regulation of investment.

Climate Risk, Insurance Retreat, And State Response, Mark P. Nevitt, Michael Pappas

Faculty Articles

Climate change is fundamentally destabilizing the private insurance industry, with many high-profile insurance companies exiting states in the face of catastrophic, climate-­induced risk. This rapid "insurance retreat" represents a major market signal in response to climate-exacerbated risks. Private businesses are making actuarial decisions, assessing that some locations are just too vulnerable to insure. At the same time, this insurance retreat also poses a policy challenge for states as they react to the mounting insurance gaps left by exiting private insurers.

This Article analyzes insurance retreat, its attendant policy challenges, and the lessons that can be drawn from state responses. It …

Virtual Energy, Joel B. Eisen

Law Faculty Publications

From employment to education, many areas of our daily lives have gone virtual, including the virtual workplace and virtual classes. By comparison, the way we generate, deliver, and consume electricity is an anachronism. And the electric industry’s outdated business model and regulatory framework are failing. For the last century-and-a-half, we have relied on ever larger power plants to generate the electricity we consume, often hundreds of miles away from the point of production. But the outsized carbon footprint of these power plants and the need to transmit their output over long distances threaten the electric grid’s reliability, affordability, and long-term …

Rubbing Salt Into The Wound: Environmental Injustices In Prisons And The Difficulties Of Obtaining Relief, Savannah Markel

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

American prisons are often built near or on environmentally hazardous lands. Not only do prison locations affect prisoners’ health and well-being, but deteriorating confinement conditions exacerbate such safety and wellness risks. In seeking justice for these environmental violations, prison litigants often choose to raise claims under the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause. However, the Clause requires litigants to meet an extremely high—indeed, near-impossible—bar to succeed on their claims. Environmental justice advocates have proposed an alternative remedy which calls on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate environmental injustices in prisons. This Comment analyzes the difficulties of raising an …

Steel Or Sand? Protecting The Indiana Dunes Through Community Activism, The National Park Service, And The Clean Water Act, Sophie Hill

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

U.S. National Security And Climate Change, Alexandra E. Koch, Nicole K. Carle, Gregory P. Noone

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

As sea temperatures rise and natural disasters intensify, it is critical that the U.S. national security strategy actively include plans to account for global climate change and address the complex environmental and humanitarian challenges that parallel and are driven by rising temperatures, such as resource scarcity, forced displacement, and regional instability. Climate change acts as a “threat multiplier for instability” in some of the most volatile regions of the world and can contribute to rising tensions even in historically stable regions. Climate change can also lead to increased vulnerability of military infrastructure and logistics, undermine military readiness, and demand a …

Keynote Speech By John Knox, Former U.N. Special Rapporteur For Human Rights And The Environment, John Knox

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Banning Plastic, Rachael E. Salcido

Utah Law Review

The disgusting nature of plastic pollution has finally captured the attention of policymakers and driven legal change. Local, state, and national bans on various plastic consumer items coupled with voluntary industry switching creates momentum toward a full-scale end to unnecessary plastic products. Bans have the capacity to create an important tipping point. This Article extolls the effectiveness of consumer bans and explores the challenges to achieving this highest level of environmental control. Plastic is essentially pure petroleum.1 Its persistence and destructiveness in the environment presents unique reasons to eliminate its use altogether. Plastics should only be used for essential products …

Environmental Law For A Just Transition, Dayna Nadine Scott

Articles & Book Chapters

The environmental justice movement, which turns our attention to fairness in the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens and in the processes, biases and
structures that determine those distributions, is challenging the foundations of environmental law.
• ‘Extractivism’ – a mode of accumulation that necessitates both a high pace and a large scale of taking of natural resources such as fossil fuels – is deeply embedded in environmental law, producing uneven costs/benefits and intense, concentrated impacts on people and ecosystems. Even as we move towards a greener economy, environmental laws and regulations governing such areas as facility siting, pollution permitting, …

Pacific Islands And The U.S. Military: The Legal Borderlands Of The Environmental Movement, Sonia Lei

Seattle University Law Review

Climate change remains an urgent, ongoing global issue that requires critical examination of institutional polluters. This includes the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum: the United States military. The Department of Defense (DoD) is a massive institution with little oversight, a carbon footprint spanning the globe, a budget greater than the next ten largest nations combined, and overly generous exemptions to environmental regulations and carbon reduction targets. This Comment examines how this lack of accountability and oversight plays out in the context of three Pacific islands that have hosted U.S. military bases for decades. By considering the environmental impact of …

From Redlining To Greenlining, Danielle Stokes

Law Faculty Publications

For generations, marginalized communities have been impacted by discriminatory land use, zoning, and property valuation policies, from redlining in the 1930s to the siting of undesirable land uses that persists today. Because of these policies, marginalized communities are forced to contend with low property values, substandard infrastructure, and increased health risks. The very same mechanisms that created these injustices, however, may now be key to addressing them. This Article introduces “greenlining” as a land use planning mechanism that seeks to remediate historical housing, siting, and economic disparities while forging a path toward energy and environmental justice. Greenlining, the productive and …

Biopiracy: Using New Laws And Databases To Protect Indigenous Communities, Cleo-Symone Scott

Law Student Publications

Indigenous people have a historical link to those who inhabited a country or region at the time when people of different cultures or origins arrived. Traditionally, indigenous people have a special relationship with their ancestral environments. But their way of living has long been under threat. The land that indigenous people live on is home to over 80% of our planet’s biodiversity, but it continues to be appropriated and plundered due to bioprospecting or, as some call it, biopiracy. Bioprospecting is defined as “the exploration and information gathering of genetic and biochemical material to develop commercial products.” While innovation is …

From Community Science To Community Justice: Protecting Data Usability In Community Air Quality Monitoring Networks, Marley Manjarrez

Law Student Publications

Community science holds significant promise for empowering communities to address air quality disparities and advocate for policy change. However, the usability and legal defensibility of community-collected data pose significant challenges. This article argues that with the help of low-cost tools such as air quality monitors, community members can take an active role in combating the disproportionate distribution of air pollutants hidden by our current regulatory scheme. By examining the regulatory frameworks under the Clean Air Act and opportunities for procedural justice at federal, state, and local levels, the article identifies pathways for incorporating community-collected data into air quality regulation and …

If It Can Make It There, It Can Make It Anywhere: How New York's "Green Amendment" Is Catalyzing Environmental Progress In Light Of Federal Failures, Zoe Zingale

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note examines the challenges faced by minority and low-income communities in seeking legal redress for environmental injustices, highlighting how federal legal avenues like Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have been limited by Supreme Court rulings. It proposes that state-level Green Amendments, such as New York's, offer a promising alternative for these communities to assert their right to a healthy environment and seek relief from disparate environmental impacts.

The Epa's Failure To Revise The Clean Water Act And Its Impact On Communities, Will Matushek

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

What A Waste: The Prosecution Of Hazardous Substances Crimes During The Trump Administration, Joshua Ozymy, Ph.D., Melissa Jarrell Ozymy, Ph.D.

Public Interest Law Reporter

The Trump Administration went to great lengths to roll back environmental regulatory and enforcement efforts. Yet, researchers know very little about the impact of the Administration on the criminal prosecution of hazardous substance crimes. This study utilizes content analysis of EPA criminal investigations leading to prosecution during the Trump Era to analyze charging and sentencing patterns and illustrate the greater themes that emerged during this period. Prosecutions are dominated by hazardous waste (48%), pesticide (41%), and lead-based paint (11%) crimes. Results show prosecutors were able to pursue crimes involving significant harm and culpable conduct, while securing over $90 million in …

Carbon Free Tbd, Hudson B. Kingston

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

Cost Prohibitive Bonds As Denial Of Justice: Grassroots And Community Organizations’ Due Process Rights, Elizabeth Royal, Aletta Brady

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

“The Times They Are A Changin’”: Generational Comparisons Of The Civil Rights Movement With The Current-Day Climate Movement, Robin Boyle-Laisure

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Bob Dylan’s famous song lyric, capturing the spirit of the 1960s, is just as apropos today: “The times they are a changin’” (1964). The civil rights movement changed history by securing legislation and court decisions advancing the constitutional rights of black people (Dalton 2008, 7). The movement took flight at a time when the Baby Boomer generation was politically active and seeking social change. As outlined in the introduction to this book, the generations and their birth years are as follows: Silents (1925–45); Baby Boomers (1946–64); Gen X (1965–80); Millennials (1981–95); and Gen Z (1996–2013). Baby Boomers “experienced the …

The Private Litigation Impact Of New York's Green Amendment, Evan Bianchi, Sean Di Luccio, Martin Lockman, Vincent Nolette

Faculty Publications

The increasing urgency of climate change, combined with federal environmental inaction under the Trump Administration, inspired a wave of environmental action at the state and local level. Building on the environmental movement of the 1970s, activists have pushed to amend more than a dozen state constitutions to include “green amendments”—self-executing individual rights to a clean environment. In 2022, New York activists succeeded, and New York’s Green Amendment (the NYGA) now provides that “Each person shall have a right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.”

However, the power of the NYGA and similar green amendments turns on judicial …

Front Matter, Colorado Environmental Law Journal

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.