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Global Legal Ethics And Corporate Social Responsibility: Where’S The Beef?, Heidi L. Frostestad

College of Law Faculty Publications

This Article identifies the newer global soft law norms in international business transactions and unique synergies between cultural competency and corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) for corporate lawyers. With the advent of widespread and varied corporate human rights abuses in various contexts, the international community has struggled with appropriate responses to deter harmful corporate action. The United States and its corporate actors are subject to hard U.S. laws, such as those federal and state laws attempting to prevent international human trafficking, environmental harm, use of underage workers, and foreign corrupt practices. This Article provides an overview of the global epidemic of …

Why Localizing Climate Federalism Matters (Even) During A Biden Administration, Sarah Fox

College of Law Faculty Publications

After four years of a Trump Administration hostile to action on climate change, the United States is now under the leadership of the Biden Administration, which acknowledges the scope of the global climate crisis and has a number of proposals for addressing it. For now, the Democratic par-ty also controls both houses of Congress. All of that is good news for progress on climate change. It does not mean, however, that the federal government will be immediately poised to solve the climate challenge. First of all, the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to continue to occupy a tremendous share of federal …

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.

Black Urban Ecologies And Structural Extermination, Etienne C. Toussaint

Faculty Publications

Residents of low-income, metropolitan communities across the United States frequently live in “food apartheid” neighborhoods—areas with limited access to nutrient-rich and fresh food. Local government law scholars, poverty law scholars, and political theorists have long argued that structural racism embedded in America’s political economy influences the uneven development of such Black urban ecologies. Accordingly, food justice scholars have called for local governments to develop urban agricultural markets that combat racism in global corporatized food systems by localizing food development. These demands have only amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has ravaged Black communities where residents suffer from preexisting health conditions …

Perfluoroalkyl And Polyfluoroalkyl Substances: Using Law And Policy To Address These Environmental Health Hazards In The United States, Jennifer Black, Amanda Moreland, Montrece Mcneill Ransom, Emely Sanchez

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

No abstract provided.

Carbon Taxes And Economic Inequality, Shi-Ling Hsu

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Measuring Environmental Justice: Analysis Of Progress Under Presidents Bush, Obama, And Trump, Mollie Soloway

Student Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Beyond Emissions: Migration, Prisons, And The Green New Deal, Wyatt Sassman, Danielle C. Jefferis

Faculty Scholarship

The Green New Deal is a bold resolution that asks us to envision climate policy beyond emissions reductions and pollution controls. The proposal seeks to reduce environmental impacts, including by dramatically reducing carbon emissions, while supporting domestic manufacturing, unionized labor, sustainable agriculture, and social equity. The Biden Administration has expressed support for the Green New Deal as “a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face,” and the proposal has influenced the Administration’s early actions to reduce carbon emissions. How can the Green New Deal’s framework guide climate policy beyond emissions reductions, and who should be a part of …

Centering Racial Equity: Disparities Task Forces As A Strategy To Ensure An Equitable Pandemic Response, Dawn M. Hunter, Betsy Lawton

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

COVID-19 has had a stark and severe impact on health, economic stability, housing, and education in communities of color in the United States. As the pandemic has unfolded, the disproportionate number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths due to COVID-19 among Black, Hispanic and Latinx, and Indigenous people has served as a stark reminder that the systems and structures that lead to these disparities need to be changed in order to achieve equitable outcomes.

This Article assesses efforts by cities, counties, states, and organizations to address the impact of COVID-19 on communities of color through formal task forces or working groups …

Maybe Coal Shouldn’T Keep The Lights On: An Analysis Of Climate Change In Kentucky And Potential Legislation That Could Mitigate Its Effects, Shelby Lamar

Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, & Natural Resources Law

No abstract provided.

Turbulence Ahead: Why The First Domestic Aircraft Carbon Emissions Regulations Are A Danger To Climate Protection, Taylor Williams

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

Reducing emission levels from transportation is one of the most vital steps in combating climate change, but domestic aircraft were not subject to this kind of regulation until recently. In July 2020, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed the first carbon emission standards for airplanes. While this regulatory move appears to be progress for protecting the environment, it locked in current emissions levels for years to come. The overwhelming majority of aircraft models are already 6% more efficient than the new standard requires them to be. The rule highlights the tension between industry considerations and environmental justice.

This Comment seeks …

A Fare Share: A Proposed Solution To Address The Racial Disparity In Access To Public Transportation Funding In America, Michael Swistara

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Black American households are up to six times less likely to own a car than white families and are four times more likely to rely on public transportation to meet their daily needs. Despite this, communities of color have seen consistent disinvestment in their transit infrastructure. Four hundred years of continued housing segregation combined with post-recession austerity policies and ongoing pro-automobile bias has exacerbated this disparity. This Note proposes a straightforward legislative tool to begin to combat this inequity. The proposed legislation would require that urbanized areas spend their public transit dollars according to the population density of the communities …

Looking Toward Restorative Justice For Redlined Communities Displaced By Eco-Gentrification, Helen H. Kang

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

MJEAL chose to publish Helen Kang’s piece, Looking Toward Restorative Justice for Redlined Communities Displaced by Eco-Gentrification, because it offers a unique analytic approach for analyzing the roots of environmental racism and the appropriate tools to help rectify it. She offers an argument for why restorative justice needs to be the framework and explains how we can accomplish this in the context of a whole government solution. MJEAL is excited to offer what will be an influential approach for environmental restorative justice to the broader activist and academic community.

Energy Without Injustice?: Indigenous Participation In Renewable Energy Generation, Adrian A. Smith, Dayna Nadine Scott

Articles & Book Chapters

There is growing involvement of Indigenous communities in renewable energy development across their traditional territories in what is now called Canada. Here, we explore Indigenous participation in large-scale “green” energy generation as a response to encroachment, displacement, and dispossession wrought by the extractivist orientation of contemporary settler capitalism.

Introduction To The Special Issue: A Retrospective On Race In America, Angela S. Boettcher, Quintin H. Morse, Nora Rainey Olson Cooke, Erin Mclaughlin, Caroline Young, Charissa Wood, Sasha Strong, Natasha Viteri, Taylor Schad

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cities Climate Law: A Legal Framework For Local Action In The U.S., Amy E. Turner, Michael Burger

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

In the last several years, cities around the world have taken on a leading role in advancing policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the United States, dozens of cities have set goals targeting ambitious greenhouse gas emission reductions by a date certain (80% or "net zero" by 2050 are common formulations), and many more have pledged to achieve a 100% renewable or carbon-free energy supply.

Many U.S. cities are still determining the policies that would best achieve their climate commitments. In addition to political, financial, and technical considerations, these cities must consider how to structure their policies to comport …

Global Legal Ethics And Corporate Social Responsibility: Where's The Beef?, Heidi Frostestad Kuehl

North Carolina Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Contents, North Carolina Law Review

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Losing Ground: How The Supreme Court's Use Of Easement Law In U.S. Forest Service V. Cowpasture River Preservation Ass'n Thwarts Environmental Justice, William W. Metcalf

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Intersections Of Environmental Justice And Sustainable Development: Framing The Issues, Sumudu A. Atapattu, Carmen G. Gonzalez, Sara L. Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This chapter proceeds as follows. Section 1.2 describes the evolution of the concept of sustainable development from the 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It discusses contem- porary degrowth and green growth movements, before introducing the relatively novel concept of just sustainabilities, a synthesis of environmental justice and sustainable development. Section 1.3 de!nes environmental justice and discusses its relationship to human rights and the social pillar of sustainable development, reflecting on which dimensions of environmental justice are well reflected in this book and which proved more dif!cult to address. …

Is Climate Change A National Emergency?, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

The next decade is critical for climate action. As sea levels rise, wildfires rage, and disasters increase in frequency and scale, it is clear that the U.S. must leverage an expanding menu of legal, policy, and technological tools to address climate change’s destabilizing effects. At present, we remain off-track to reduce our collective greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions and avoid irreversible, catastrophic harm. The emissions gap — the difference between the world’s current emissions trajectory and what we must emit to avoid climate change’s most severe consequences — continues to grow. Although President Biden and the 117th congressional leadership have pledged …

Thirsty Places, Priya Baskaran

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The United States, among the wealthiest and most prosperous nations in the world, regularly fails to provide clean, potable water to many of its citizens. Recent water crises occur within communities categorized as Geographically Disadvantaged Spaces ("GDS'), which often encompass urban and rural areas. What is more, people of color and economically vulnerable populations are often located within GDS, disproportionately burdening these groups with the economic and public health consequences of failing water infrastructure. This article provides a novel, comparative analysis of communities lacking potable water in Flint, Michigan, and southern West Virginia. This analysis highlights entrenched structural problems present …

The Ecological Constitution: Reframing Environmental Law By Lynda Collins, Dayna Scott

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Extracting Indigenous Jurisdiction On Private Land: The Duty To Consult And Indigenous Relations With Place In Canadian Law, Estair Van Wagner

Articles & Book Chapters

Indigenous relations with land are grounded in place-based legal orders which have been regulating the territories now making up Canada for millennia (Borrows 2010, 2018; McGregor 2010). Judicial consideration of Indigenous relations with place has focused on the duty to consult and accommodate with respect to ‘Crown land’ – lands for which federal and provincial governments are the deemed owners. This emphasis on Crown lands is logical – 89 per cent of land in Canada is held by either the federal or provincial Crown (Neimanis 2013). Indigenous claims often expressly exclude private land, wary of courts’ willingness to unsettle third-party …

Sustainable Procurement: Building Vocabulary To Accelerate The Federal Procurement Conversation, Steven L. Schooner, Evan Matsuda

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

To the extent that the federal procurement process features prominently in the Government’s plan to slow the pace of, and adapt to the effects of, climate change, this paper attempts to provide some basic building blocks for acquisition professionals to practice sustainable procurement. The paper offers a list of key sustainable procurement vocabulary and introduces a number of key concepts so that the acquisition community can build a common body of knowledge (BOK) to accelerate its progress up the learning curve of sustainable procurement implementation. The paper also highlights a number of existing tools and resources to help translate those …

Nepa And Gentrification: Using Federal Environmental Review To Combat Urban Displacement, Jesse Hevia

Emory Law Journal

Cities are embracing green spaces and environmental amenities. But as government and private investment surges into urban neighborhoods, residents of historically disinvested communities are evicted and displaced to make room for a wealthier—and often whiter—demographic. The National Environmental Policy Act requires federal agencies to prepare an in-depth environmental impact statement for proposed actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment. Federally funded redevelopment projects contribute directly to the powerfully displacing forces of gentrification, and environmental impact statements for such projects should affirmatively account for the indirect displacement effects caused by that investment. Articulating a clear legal obligation that federal …

The Bounds Of Energy Law, Shelley Welton

Faculty Publications

U.S. energy law was born of fossil fuels. Consequently, our energy law has long centered on the material and legal puzzles that bringing fossil fuels to market presents. Eliminating these same carbon-producing energy sources, however, has emerged as perhaps the most pressing material transformation needed in the twenty-first century—and one that energy law scholarship has rightfully embraced. Yet in our admirable quest to aid in this transformation, energy law scholars are largely writing into the field bequeathed to us, proposing changes that tweak, but do not fundamentally challenge, last century’s tools for managing the extraction, transport, and delivery of fossil …

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 …

Home Equity: Rethinking Race And Federal Housing Policy, Sarah E. Waldeck, Rachel D. Godsil

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Neighborhoods shape every element of our lives. Where we live determines economic opportunities; our exposure to police and pollution; and the availability of positive amenities for a healthy life. Home inequity—both financial and racial—is not accidental. Federal government programs have armed white people with agency to construct “white” spaces while stigmatizing “Black” spaces. The urgency of addressing structural injustice in housing has been laid bare by police-involved shootings and the disparate death rates linked to COVID-19.

Using political philosopher Tommy Shelbie’s theory of corrective justice, this Article explores the historical and present-day harms that need to be rectified and then …

Home Equity: Rethinking Race And Federal Housing Policy, Rachel D. Godsil, Sarah E. Waldeck

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Neighborhoods shape every element of our lives. Where we live determines economic opportunities; our exposure to police and pollution; and the availability of positive amenities for a healthy life. Home inequity—both financial and racial—is not accidental. Federal government programs have armed white people with agency to construct “white” spaces while stigmatizing “Black” spaces. The urgency of addressing structural injustice in housing has been laid bare by police-involved shootings and the disparate death rates linked to COVID-19.

Using political philosopher Tommy Shelbie’s theory of corrective justice, this Article explores the historical and present-day harms that need to be rectified and then …