Digital Commons Network^™

When Drills And Pipelines Cross Indigenous Lands In The Americas, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Faculty Scholarship

From the Missouri River, passing through the Sonora Desert, all the way down to the Amazon Forest and the Andean Mountains, drills and pipelines are crossing over indigenous lands. In an energy-thirsty continent, there is no land left to spare, not even tribal land. Many of these energy infrastructure projects involve international investments that are protected by treaties and enforced by arbitral tribunals. At the same time, tribal communities have an internationally recognized right to receive prior and informed consultation before they are affected by projects of this nature. The Article focuses on the clash of rights between energy extraction …

Illegal Discharge: Exploring The History Of The Criminal Enforcement Of The U.S. Clean Water Act, Dr. Joshua Ozymy, Dr. Melisssa L. Jarrell

Fordham Environmental Law Review

The criminal prosecution of defendants that violate federal clean water laws has been ongoing for roughly four decades. Yet, we continue to have a poor understanding of how federal prosecutors use the U.S. Clean Water Act (“CWA”) to charge and prosecute criminals and the outcomes of those prosecutions. We use content analysis to analyze 2,588 federal criminal prosecution case summaries, 1983-2019, to gain a better historical understanding of how the CWA has been used as a prosecutorial tool, to bring out the major themes in the prosecutions, and quantify sentencing outcomes. Findings from the 828 CWA prosecutions undertaken during this …

The Biden (Energy) Doctrine, Frédéric Gilles Sourgens

ILSA Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Investors As International Law Intermediaries: Using Shareholder Proposals To Enforce Human Rights, Kishanthi Parella

Scholarly Articles

One of the biggest challenges with international law remains its enforcement. This challenge grows when it comes to enforcing international law norms against corporations and other business organizations. The United Nations Guiding Principles recognizes the “corporate responsibility to respect human rights,” which includes human rights due diligence practices that are adequate for “assessing actual and potential human rights impacts, integrating and acting upon the findings, tracking responses, and communicating how impacts are addressed.” Unfortunately, many corporations around the world are failing to implement adequate human rights due diligence practices in their supply chains. This inattention leads to significant harms for …

Appropriation Of Artisans' Intellectual Property In Fashion Design Accessories: Piracy Disguised As Giving Back?, Clovia Hamilton

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Creative industries are industries focused on the creation and exploitation of intellectual propert, including art, fashion design, and related creative services, such as advertisement and sales. During a trip to Burkina Faso in \Nest Africa, Keri Fosse was taught by an African woman how to wrap newborns with fabric in a manner that creates a strong bond and frees the mother's hands for other tasks. Burkina Faso has a craft culture and is known for its woven cotton and the textile art of Bogolan. Bogolan is a technique original to Mali and involves the tradition of dyeing threads with bright …

International Energy Law And The Paris Agreement In The Aftermath Of The Covid-19 Pandemic: Challenges And Possibilities, Carolina Arlota

ILSA Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Climate Lawyers As Movement Lawyers (And Vice Versa), Carmen G. Gonzalez

Faculty Publications & Other Works

In April 2020, the American Society of International Law (ASIL) launched an initiative to foster conversations within and beyond ASIL on the connections between climate change and virtually all other areas of international law. This essay for the ASIL Proceedings is based on a presentation delivered at the April 2021 ASIL Annual Meeting.

The essay examines the link between climate change and racial subordination from the dawn of the fossil fuel-based world economy to the present and the complicity of international law in these converging injustices. It discusses the counterhegemonic uses of international law by environmental justice movements in the …

Integrating Environmental Protection Into Asean Trading System, Kittinut Supsoontornkul

Dissertations & Theses

Integrating environmental protection into ASEAN trading system is pivotal for ensuring long-term economic development and environmental sustainability. Due to its resource-based economy, ASEAN's economic performance highly depends on the sustainable condition of the environment. The ASEAN approach prioritizing economic growth without environmental consideration leads to environmental degradation and economic loss. Many transboundary environmental problems in ASEAN result from unsustainable production methods aiming to maximize advantages in trade competition. There are growing international efforts in addressing production and process methods as a part of the sustainable development goal. Major trading partners of ASEAN increasingly employ unilateral environmental trade measures and environmental …

Investors As International Law Intermediaries: Using Shareholder Proposals To Enforce Human Rights, Kishanthi Parella

Seattle University Law Review

One of the biggest challenges with international law remains its enforcement. This challenge grows when it comes to enforcing international law norms against corporations and other business organizations. The United Nations Guiding Principles recognizes the “corporate responsibility to respect human rights,” which includes human rights due diligence practices that are adequate for “assessing actual and potential human rights impacts, integrating and acting upon the findings, tracking responses, and communicating how impacts are addressed.” Unfortunately, many corporations around the world are failing to implement adequate human rights due diligence practices in their supply chains. This inattention leads to significant harms for …

Making America A Better Place For All: Sustainable Development Recommendations For The Biden Administration, John C. Dernbach, Scott E. Schang, Robert W. Adler, Karol Boudreaux, John Bouman, Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, Kimberly Brown, Mikhail Chester, Michael B. Gerrard, Stephen Herzenberg, Samuel Markolf, Corey Malone-Smolla, Jane Nelson, Uma Outka, Tony Pipa, Alexandra Phelan, Leroy Paddock, Jonathan D. Rosenbloom, William Snape, Anastasia Telesetsky, Gerald Torres, Elizabeth Ann Kronk Warner, Audra Wilson

Faculty Scholarship

In 2015, the United Nations Member States, including the United States, unanimously approved 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. The SDGs are nonbinding; each nation is to implement them based on its own priorities and circumstances. This Article argues that the SDGs are a critical normative framework the United States should use to improve human quality of life, freedom, and opportunity by integrating economic and social development with environmental protection. It collects the recommendations of 22 experts on steps that the Biden-Harris Administration should take now to advance each of the SDGs. It is part of …

Justice For Juristac: Using International And Comparative Law To Protect Indigenous Lands, Zartner, Dana

Santa Clara Journal of International Law

Justice for Juristac: Using International and Comparative Law to Protect Indigenous Lands

Note: Building Blocks Of A Fundamental Right: A Thought Experiment On The Constitutional Right To A Livable Climate, Melanie Hess

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

When civil rights lawyers sought to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson in the years leading up to Brown v. Board of Education, they faced a history of institutionalized segregation and inequality, constitutional acceptance of the “separate but equal” doctrine, and sharp social divisions on the issue. Other landmark cases of rights recognition, such as Obergefell v. Hodges and Roe v. Wade, similarly built upon years of evolution in law, precedent, and social opinion that made them inconceivable before their time. Early versions of the litigation strategies envisioning these judgments might have been tentative and vague, lacking in factual, legal, …

The Basel Convention On The Control Of Transboundary Movements Of Hazardous Wastes And Their Disposal: A Legal Misfit In Global Ship Recycling Jurisprudence, Ishtiaque Ahmed

Washington International Law Journal

The Basel Convention has tempted developed nations into the practice of exporting hazardous waste into undeveloped nations’ territories simply for money in the name of recycling. Being extremely business unfriendly, particularly for the recycling industry, this convention has not been welcomed by many developing nations, leading to serious policy and legal uncertainty in those jurisdictions. However, in the absence of any dedicated, enforceable international legal instrument, the Basel Convention currently remains the foundation of ship-recycling jurisprudence in the domestic courts of all dominant, ship-recycling states and the rest of the world, and the basis for curbing the movement of end-of-life …

Editor's Note, Brianna Delduca, Hannah Gardenswartz

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note, Nicole Waxman, Elizabeth Platt

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note, Nicole Waxman, Elizabeth Platt

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note, Luke Trompeter, Ingrid Lesemann

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

2001 Supreme Court Redux, Mary Stevens

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Environmental Racism: How Governments Are Systematically Poisoning Indigenous Communities & The U.N.’S Role, Maia Dombey

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

This note examines the practice of toxic waste dumping on indigenous lands and how it fits within the broader concept of environmental racism. It further evaluates the international human rights framework and how the United Nations and other international bodies interact with this concept and provide means for protection against this illicit practice. Further, it examines the role of the Special Rapporteur on the Implications for Human Rights of the Environmentally Sound Management and Disposal of Hazardous Substances and Wastes and how he, in his role as Special Rapporteur, can provide relief to indigenous communities suffering the effects of this …

Beyond Culture: Reimagining The Adjudication Of Indigenous Peoples' Rights In International Law, Beatriz Garcia, Lucas Lixinski

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

This article argues that the current model of Indigenous rights adjudication foregrounds essentialized notions of culture, backgrounding interests of Indigenous peoples (IPs) that are not necessarily related to culture. Culture imposes a burden that limits the possibilities of human rights for Indigenous peoples, which is at least in part attributable to the current model's lack of precision. We show that the jurisprudence on IP rights by international adjudicatory bodies focuses on culture without meaningful attempts to explain and define it, is imprecise on how culture affects the reading of the human right for which it serves as the basis, as …

Sdlp After 20: Sustainable Development In The Anthropocene, David Hunter

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

A Relational Analysis Of Enterprise Obligations And Carbon Majors For Climate Justice, Sara L. Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

A coherent theory of climate justice must answer the question of “who owes what to whom, and why?” In this paper I consider this question with a focus on the contribution of business enterprises, in particular the ‘carbon majors’, to climate injustice. I will first introduce a relational approach to legal analysis, drawing upon the work of feminist and vulnerability theorists, Indigenous feminist theorists, and feminist corporate and international law theorists. This relational approach confronts the dominant yet unacknowledged prevalence of the bounded autonomous individual of liberal thought in diverse areas of law and policy, and offers a method not …

Environmental Injustice: How Treaties Undermine Human Rights Related To The Environment, Lisa E. Sachs, Lise Johnson, Ella Merrill

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Growing cries for action to effectively address the climate and other environmental crises hold important implications for the governance of cross-border investments. Policymakers and environmental advocates have often overlooked how provisions granted by states in international investment agreements (IIAs) have been used by investors to challenge government measures taken in the public interest to protect the environment and advance environmental justice.

This 2019 paper, published in the Sciences Po Legal Review issue devoted to the climate crisis, explains how the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, made available to investors in thousands of bilateral and multilateral trade and investment agreements, may …

Gmo Corn, Mexico, And Coloniality, Ernesto Hernandez-Lopez

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Genetically modified ("GMO") corn germinates legal controversies in Mexico. Since 2013, Mexican courts have temporarily suspended GMO corn because it threatens biodiversity. In the Colectividad del Maiz lawsuit, courts have prohibited Mexico from issuing commercial GMO permits while the litigation continues. Companies like Monsanto need these permits to sell GMO seeds. Corn is the most essential food item for millions of Mexicans and is central to Mexican culture. Mexicans wait for Colectividad del Maiz's resolution, siding with biodiversity or GMOs. This Article describes scientific GMO controversies and analyzes biosecurity, class-action, and international environmental law. It argues that this corn fight …

International Law And Theories Of Global Justice, Steven Ratner, David Luban, Carmen Pavel, Jiewuh Song, James Stewart

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

International law informs, and is informed by, concerns for global justice. Yet the two fields that engage most with prescribing the normative structure of the world order – international law and the philosophy of global justice – have tended to work on parallel tracks. Many international lawyers, with their commitment to formal sources, regard considerations of substantive (and not merely procedural) justice as ultra vires for much of their work. Philosophers of global justice, in turn, tend to explore the moral commitments of international actors without grappling with the international legal doctrine or institutions. In recent years, however, both disciplines …

International Law And Theories Of Global Justice: Remarks, Steven R. Ratner, James Stewart, Jiewuh Song, Carmen Pavel

Articles

International law (IL) and political philosophy represent two rich disciplines for exploring issues of global justice. At their core, each seeks to build a better world based on some universally agreed norms, rules, and practices, backed by effective institutions. International lawyers, even the most positivist of them, have some underlying assumptions about a just world order that predisposes their interpretive methods; legal scholars have incorporated concepts of justice in their work even as their overall pragmatic orientation has limited the nature of their inquiries. Many philospophers, for their part, have engaged with IL to some extent—at a minimum recognizing that …

Environmental Injustice: How Treaties Undermine The Right To A Healthy Environment, Lisa E. Sachs, Lise Johnson, Ella Merrill

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Our planet faces unprecedented threats, including irreversible global warming, loss in biodiversity, and water pollution and water scarcity. The impacts of these environmental crises also threaten human rights and exacerbate inequality. Slowing these worsening environmental trends – and addressing the impacts of environmental change on populations – will require cumulative policy responses at the national and international level.

The Human Right To A Healthy Environment: Pushing The Boundaries In The Inter-American System, Sarah Dávila-Ruhaak

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The connection between the environment and human rights is not a surprising one. The enjoyment of human rights depends on a person’s ability to live free from interference and to have his or her rights protected. The interdependence of human rights and the protection of the environment is manifested in the full and effective enjoyment of the rights to life, highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, adequate standard of living, adequate food, clean water and sanitation, housing, culture, freedom of expression and association, information and education, participation, effective remedies, and the rights of indigenous peoples. Without adequate access …

Transnational Perspectives On The Paris Climate Agreement Beyond Paris: Redressing American Defaults In Caring For Earth’S Biosphere, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Anxiety about the fate of human civilization is rising. International Law has an essential role to play in sustaining community of nations. Without enhancing International Environmental Law, the biosphere that sustains all nations is imperiled. Laws in the United States can either impede or advance global environmental stewardship. What is entailed in such a choice?

The biosphere is changing. At a time when extraordinary technological prowess allows governments the capacity to know how deeply they are altering Earth's biosphere, nations experience a perverse inability to cooperate together. The Arctic is melting rapidly, with knock on effects for sea level rise …

Case Global: Cwru Law Students Document War Crimes In Yemen Conflict, Case Western Reserve University School Of Law, The Frederick K. Cox International Law Center

Case Global Newsletter

Vol. 11, No. 1 (2019)

• Special Report: Students Document War Crimes in Yemen Conflict
• Trade Law Q&A with Professor Colares
• Special Report: Advocating for Refugees from Cleveland to Burma
• Frederick K. Cox International Law Center Names New Director
• Foreign Concurrent Degree Program Leads to Elite Law Firm Employment
• CWRU Teams Triumph at International Moot Court Competitions…
• International Law Curriculum: Sequence to Success
• Dean Scharf Featured on United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law 
• CWRU’s Talking Foreign Policy Radio Program Examines the Crisis in Yemen
• CWRU Expands its Reach in Asia
• Fulbright Scholar Professor Cover Teaches International Law in Kenya
• Law …