Digital Commons Network^™

Resilient Dispute Resolution Systems For International Energy Conflicts, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Faculty Scholarship

Energy-related conflicts are on the rise, spanning diverse issues such as the impacts of rare mineral mining on local communities, the impacts of sanctions on energy investments due to the Russia-Ukraine war, and the impacts of expanded subsidies on the electric vehicle and solar panel industries. Increasingly, companies, communities, and governments are clashing over the challenges of pursuing disparate and sometimes competing energy policies. This Article argues that dispute resolution mechanisms in the energy investment sector must be fundamentally rethought. Traditional semi-adjudicatory models, which focus on winners and losers, fail to accommodate the complex and multifaceted nature of contemporary energy …

Fighting The Black Snake: The Dapl And The Case For Indigenous Environmental Stewardship, Kenny Moll

Student Theses 2015-Present

This thesis analyzes the current scope of environmental injustice on Native lands in the U.S. Specifically it examines The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and its impacts on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North Dakota. Western colonialism and capitalism have dominated North American ecosystems since their forcible introduction hundreds of years ago, causing the commodification of natural resources and leading to injustices such as that of the “Black Snake.” However, the story of The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s resistance will be analyzed through the framework of Indigenous philosophy and environmental justice. Chapter 1 analyzes the implementation of the DAPL and …

Public Perception Of Pedestrian Space In Industrial Zones: A Case Study Of The Pulogadung Industrial Zone, Herlina Merinda, Hayati Sari Hasibuan, Sri Setiawati Tumuyu

International Review of Humanities Studies

Addressing the difficulties of sustainable development, the Jakarta Industrial Estate Pulogadung encounters the challenge of becoming more inclusive in constructing infrastructure for walkers by creating paths that are friendly for pedestrians As walking serves as an important sustainable and healthful means of transport, having pedestrian pathways can enhance how the public views pedestrian accessibility in their workplace. This, in turn, can promote the use of more eco-friendly public transport options. This research aims to explore how the public views pedestrians in industrial zones, with the goal of promoting spaces that are friendly to walkers. The study utilized a quantitative method …

Front Matter And Table Of Contents

University of Miami Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

Killer Heat: The Disaster Fema Refuses To Own, Robert R.M. Verchick

University of Chicago Legal Forum

Extreme heat, also known as a “heatwave,” is by far the leading weather-related cause of death in the United States.1 In 2023, extreme heat took 2,300 lives—more than all the deaths attributed to hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, droughts, wildfires, winter storms, and floods combined. Harms from extreme heat, which are especially severe in disadvantaged communities, will only increase as the climate continues to break down. Despite these facts, in more than 70 years of comprehensive disaster response, no president has ever declared a “major disaster” based on extreme heat, nor has the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) ever recommended he do …

A Continuum Of Responsibility: An Examination Of The Human Right To A Healthy Environment Of Present And Future Generations, Sarah Dávila A.

University of Chicago Legal Forum

Youth-led advocacy has been at the forefront of the protection of the right to a healthy environment in the face of a triple planetary crisis: loss of biodiversity, environmental degradation, and climate change. Globally, youth have called upon international bodies to provide guidance as to how States and private actors can be held accountable for human right violations. They have demanded that States protect not merely the human rights of present generations, but those of future generations. This Article explores recent developments in international human rights law, including the recent Committee on the Rights of the Child General Comment No. …

The Disaster Management Complex: Law’S Adaptations In Times Of Climate Disaster, Michael Burger, Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, Lucia Bragg

University of Chicago Legal Forum

The Anthropocene is marked by constant climate-related disasters and defined by the urgent need to foster and implement adaptations to future climate impacts that reduce disaster risk. The intensity, frequency, and severity of extreme weather events continue to rise even as nations and corporations alike miss their emissions targets, all promising a hotter, wetter, and more extreme future. A number of federal agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), have, at times, sought to adapt their own famously fragmented responses to these changing circumstances. However, federal disaster response is conducted against a backdrop of authorizing legislation that is designed …

Burdened Communities, Beleaguered Wombs, & Barren Choices: The Impact Of Dobbs On Environmental And Reproductive Justice, Emily R. Rudo, Elizabeth E. Sharp, Michael R. Desjardins

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amici Curiae Children's Rights Scholars And Advocates In Support Of Appellants' Opening Brief: Lighthiser V. Trump, Abigail L. Fleming, Douglas A. Ruley, Catherine Smith

Scholarly Articles

For decades, constitutional doctrine has recognized that children possess enforceable constitutional rights and that their developmental, physical, and social differences from adults are important considerations in constitutional analysis. Courts may not impute adult capacities, privileges, or political agency to children when determining whether their rights may be vindicated, leaving them no democratic mechanism to alleviate their injuries.

The district court’s dismissal of the youth plaintiffs’ claims rests on precisely that error. Although the court recognized that the children alleged concrete, severe, and escalating harms caused by the challenged executive actions, it concluded that relief must come from the political branches …

Where There’S Fire, There’S Smoke: Regulation Of Fine Particulate Air Pollution In The Fairbanks North Star Borough, Caleb T. Anderson

Alaska Law Review

In 2006, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency strengthened the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for 24-hour fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5). A large portion of the Fairbanks North Star Borough, encompassing the cities of Fairbanks and North Pole, was designated a Clean Air Act nonattainment area under the revised PM2.5 standards. Wood smoke from home heating was found to be one of the primary culprits, particularly during strong inversions that trap air pollution at ground level. This Article reviews the complex legal history of federal, state, and local efforts to bring the Fairbanks area into compliance with the NAAQS. …

Changing Climate, Changing Rights: How The Unitedstates Can Learn From The Emergence Of The Right To A Healthy Environment In Colombia And India, Jasmine Furin

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

The right to a healthy environment embodies the idea that environmental protection and the enjoyment of human rights are connected. As this concept has developed, authorities around the world have described the contours of this right in various ways. The right to a healthy environment generally includes a safe climate, clean air, healthy ecosystems, biodiversity, access to safe water, healthy and sustainable food, non-toxic environments, access to information, public participation in decision-making, and access to justice. Thus, the right to a healthy environment is unique because it provides individuals with a more complete set of protections against environmental harms compared …

Editor's Note, Emily Derrenbacker

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Colorado Environmental Law Journal

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Greening With Justice: Evaluating Denver’S Urban Green Space Policies Through An Environmental Justice Lens, Vicente Tapia

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Policy Recommendations And Ways Forward, Rachel Locke, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum

Book Chapters

This chapter discusses how the transformative ideas presented by the contributors can be applied in concrete and meaningful ways to policy, practice, and research. The chapter begins with a discussion of principles that were both crucial to the articulation of the recommendations and are similarly crucial to any proposal to address identity-based mass violence. The human-centered values of this volume demand a focus not only on outcomes but also on process, as these principles attest. The chapter then focuses on practical areas of action, from capacity building to funding to shifting narratives, and more. This chapter shifts from prescriptive policy …

Antitrust & The Immoral Energy Economy, Kristen Van De Biezendos

Faculty Scholarship

The age of climate change is upon us, but regulations and programs intended to decarbonize the electricity sector have been effectively stymied by utilities defending their monopoly power. The lack of robust antitrust enforcement against the utilities to date is a result of the belief that regulation is sufficient to police monopoly anticompetitive activity, that the natural monopoly structure of utilities makes them a poor fit for antitrust principles, and that the utilities are immune from Sherman Act claims under the state action exemption. But these rationales reflect a misunderstanding of the purpose of public utility law and its preference …

The Deregulation Of Cancer, Daniel G. Aaron

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Fifty years ago, the U.S. embarked on a radical new path. Under pressure from the environmental movement, Congress passed an array of statutes aimed at regulating carcinogens out of our world. This regulatory experiment sprawled from air and water to food and consumer products.

Legal scholars have paid scant attention to this wave of cancer regulation despite its size and importance and the public’s apparent interest in avoiding carcinogens. But there is a growing literature finding flaws with individual regimes within the framework, such as the Clean Air Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and the Tobacco Control Act. In …

The Crisis In U.S. Cancer Care: Law, Markets, And Privatization, Daniel G. Aaron

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Cancer is surging among youth and young adults in the U.S., yet instead of public regulation addressing its root causes, we have outsourced the management of cancer to the private sector.  A suite of laws, embodying faith that corporations will cure cancer, has subsidized the cancer biomedical enterprise and transformed quasi-public institutions into marketized, profit-seeking entities.  These changes, across patent law, healthcare law, innovation law, and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) law, have privatized cancer. 

The market failures I describe in U.S. cancer care raise larger questions about who we entrust with managing critical social problems.  This Article provides theoretical …

From Copper To Ashes: Violations Of The Right To A Healthy Environment And Health In Tsumeb, Namibia, Sarah Dávila A.

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Birth Of Modern International Criminal Law: The International Military Tribunal At Nuremberg, Frank Rosenblatt

Journal Articles

The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (IMT), the most famous and arguably most important international criminal trial in human history, almost did not occur. In fact, it might even be an accident of history that the most senior perpetrators of the Nazi regime’s atrocities eventually faced the courtroom instead of summary execution. That their fate was decided by rights over might has shaped the world; helped birth the fields of international criminal law and international human rights law; and become the starting point for conversations about international law, transitional justice, genocide, and human rights.

Shifting Structural Power: The Tech Energy Transition, Amy L. Stein

UF Law Faculty Publications

For the first time in over a decade, flat and stagnant electricity demand is expected to skyrocket. This increased demand is driven in large part by data centers that support artificial intelligence, crypto mining, and cloud computing. This is straining the electric grid, its stakeholders, and legal constructs in significant ways. Legal energy scholarship has spent the last fifteen years focused on the challenges of managing an electric grid transitioning to clean energy, in a world where privately owned electric utilities maintain powerful monopolies across the country. But there are no accounts of how the balance of power in this …

The Sound Of The Police: Police Radio Encryption And Freedom Of The Press, Toluwanimi Fajolu

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Operation Midway Blitz: How Federal Immigration Agents Violated International Human Rights, Sarah Dávila A., Alejandra Palacios, Roberto A. Valdez Jr.

Faculty White Papers

No abstract provided.

Shifting Structural Power: The Tech Energy Transition, Amy L. Stein

Indiana Law Journal

For the first time in over a decade, flat and stagnant electricity demand is expected to skyrocket. This increased demand is driven in large part by data centers that support artificial intelligence, crypto mining, and cloud computing. This is straining the electric grid, its stakeholders, and legal constructs in significant ways. Legal energy scholarship has spent the last fifteen years focused on the challenges of managing an electric grid transitioning to clean energy, in a world where privately owned electric utilities maintain powerful monopolies across the country. But there are no accounts of how the balance of power in this …

Environmental Risk Modeling For Heavy Rainfall Events In Jeddah City Between The Years (2000-2025), Amina Atallah Al-Rehaili

University of Tabuk Journal for Humanities and Social Sciences

This study models the potential environmental risks associated with heavy rainfall events that affected Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, between 2000 and 2025. A descriptive-analytical approach based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) was employed to analyze spatial patterns of rainfall and assess their environmental implications. The methodology included a literature review, collection of daily rainfall data, identification of extreme rainfall events, and spatial analysis of rainfall distribution across the city. A suitability model was then developed to determine areas most vulnerable to heavy rainfall hazards. Results indicate that heavy rainfall events and their environmental impacts on residents and property correspond to 70.37% …

When Climate Change Forces Flight: Legal Duties In The Age Of Retreat, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

In the face of climate-driven disasters, government officials and individuals alike must decide whether to invest in climate-exposed areas or retreat. This Article analyzes emerging legal and policy issues associated with both climate retreat (when the government relocates people and infrastructure away from climate-exposed areas) and abandonment (when individuals leave climate-exposed areas, following natural disasters or otherwise). I argue that government-driven climate retreat must consider four overlapping legal duties, raising novel questions in an era of climate destabilization. First, does the government have an affirmative duty to rescue its citizens, and is this duty transformed by the government’s role in …

Uncharted Waters: Addressing The Shortcomings Of Criminal Liability Under The Clean Water Act By Charging Water Polluters With Assault, Abigail English

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Water pollution incidents pose both acute and long-term risks to human health, yet the Clean Water Act (CWA) ineffectively holds water polluters accountable. By defining criminal violations in terms of technical breaches of the statute, the CWA’s criminal provisions are vulnerable to narrow judicial interpretations, leaving many environmental crimes unpunished. Furthermore, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rarely pursues criminal charges under the CWA, relying instead on civil fines, which fail to impose meaningful consequences. This underinclusiveness and under-utilization allows many polluters to evade serious penalties. Even when pollution incidents are covered by the CWA and the EPA pursues prosecution, the …

Mind The Gap: Time To Rehabilitate Section 504 To Prohibit Disparate Impact Discrimination, Shawn Grant

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

Unseen Labour, Unmatched Impact: Struggles And Strategies Of Supervising Lawyers In Canadian Clinical Law Programs, Sarah Buhler, Gemma Smyth

Dalhousie Law Journal

Supervision has been described as the “beating heart” and the “core” of clinical legal education. Yet lawyers who supervise law students in clinical programs have challenging and poorly understood roles within Canadian legal education. This article analyzes interviews with lawyers who supervise students in Canadian law-school affiliated legal clinics. Supervising lawyers describe the tensions between their roles as lawyers, supervisors and mentors, university or non-profit employees, social justice advocates, members of law societies, and clinic team members. These tensions often exist within an environment of lower pay, poor job security, substandard treatment by colleagues, and inadequate training. Despite these challenges, …

Foreword, Mckenzie Porter

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.