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A Wrong Turn With The Rights Of Nature Movement, Noah M. Sachs

Law Faculty Publications

Environmentalists have long dreamed of granting enforceable legal rights to nature, and their vision has recently become reality. Governments in the United States and abroad are enacting Rights of Nature laws, and many scholars have championed this burgeoning movement as one of the best hopes for preserving the environment.

Legal rights for nature seem visionary, but policymakers and scholars are overlooking considerable problems with this approach. This Article spotlights these problems, including the vague and incoherent content of nature’s rights, the difficulty of defining the boundaries of natural entities, the absence of limiting principles for the rights, and the legislation’s …

Fighting For Whiteness In Ukraine, Marissa Jackson Sow

Law Faculty Publications

Teri McMurtry-Chubb’s Race Unequals: Overseer Contracts, White Masculinities, and the Formation of Managerial Identity in the Plantation Economy offers groundbreaking insights into the gendered economic hierarchies internal to the body politic of whiteness through its examination of the limitations that plantation overseers’ contracts in the American Deep South placed on their ability to exercise the proprietorship and contracting authority prerequisite to white identity. This Essay uses the Ukrainian campaign to be recognized as a liberal white nation, and formally become a member of the West, as a contemporary case study of how whiteness remains hegemonized and subject to the ability …

ศึกษาและวิเคราะห์ความสอดคล้องระหว่างแนวคิดว่าด้วยการจัดการทรัพยากรร่วมโดยมีชุมชนเป็นฐานกับพระราชบัญญัติป่าชุมชน พ.ศ. 2562, ปลายฟ้า โตศักดิ์สิทธิ์

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

ในการศึกษาและวิเคราะห์ความสอดคล้องระหว่างแนวคิดว่าด้วยการจัดการทรัพยากรร่วม โดยมีชุมชนเป็นฐานกับพระราชบัญญัติป่าชุมชน พ.ศ. 2562 มีวัตถุประสงค์เพื่อศึกษาและวิเคราะห์ หลักการสำคัญของพระราชบัญญัติป่าชุมชน พ.ศ. 2562 และเพื่อศึกษาความสอดคล้องกันระหว่าง หลักการจัดการร่วมที่มีชุมชนเป็นฐาน (Community-Based Co-Management) กับพระราชบัญญัติ ป่าชุมชน พ.ศ.2562 รวมทั้งเพื่อเสนอแนวทางการพัฒนากฎหมายป่าชุมชนเพื่อให้เกิดความ สอดคล้องกับหลักการจัดการร่วมที่มีชุมชนเป็นฐาน ทั้งนี้ การตราพระราชบัญญัติป่าชุมชน พ.ศ. 2562 เป็นการสอดรับบทบัญญัติมาตรา 43 (2) ของรัฐธรรมนูญแห่งราชอาณาจักรไทย พุทธศักราช 2560 ในเรื่องสิทธิของชุมชนในอันที่จะจัดการ บำรุงรักษา และใช้ประโยชน์จากทรัพยากรธรรมชาติ สิ่งแวดล้อม และความหลากหลายทางชีวภาพ อย่างสมดุลและยั่งยืน จากการศึกษาการจัดการทรัพยากรร่วมกันได้อย่างมีประสิทธิภาพ ในศึกษา กรณีพระราชบัญญัติป่าชุมชน พ.ศ. 2562 พบว่ามีประเด็นทางข้อกฎหมายดังต่อไปนี้ 1) ประเด็นเรื่องสิทธิในจัดการทรัพยากรป่าไม้ในป่าชุมชน 2) ประเด็นเรื่องความหมายของป่าชุมชนตามพระราชบัญญัติป่าชุมชน พ.ศ. 2562 ตามมาตรา 4 พื้นที่ที่จะนำไปจัดตั้งเป็นป่าชุมชนได้นั้น ต้องเป็นป่าที่อยู่นอกเขตป่าอนุรักษ์หรือพื้นที่อื่นของรัฐนอกเขตป่าอนุรักษ์ เป็นการให้อำนาจแก่กรมป่าไม้เข้ามาจัดการและควบคุมกำกับการจัดการป่าชุมชน 3) ประเด็นเรื่องการจัดตั้งป่าชุมชนตามพระราชบัญญัติป่าชุมชน พ.ศ. 2562 ในการขออนุญาตเพื่อจัดตั้งป่าชุมชนตามพระราชบัญญัติป่าชุมชน พ.ศ. 2562 นั้น ชุมชนจะต้องมีการจัดเตรียมเอกสารมากมาย ตามมาตรา 33 รวมไปถึงการตรวจสอบจากสำนักจัดการทรัพยากรป่าไม้แห่งท้องที่อย่างเข้มงวด และได้รับการอนุมัติจากคณะกรรมการป่าชุมชนประจำจังหวัดในการพิจารณาคำขอจัดตั้งป่าชุมชน แผนจัดการป่าชุมชน และรายงานผลการตรวจสอบซึ่ง แสดงให้เห็นถึงการตรวจสอบจากรัฐและยังคงไว้ซึ่งการรวมอำนาจในการจัดการทรัพยากรธรรมชาติไว้ที่รัฐ ซึ่งขัดแย้งต่อการรับรองสิทธิของชุมชนตามรัฐธรรมนูญแห่งราชอาณาจักรไทย พุทธศักราช 2560 ในมาตรา 43 (2) 4) ประเด็นเรื่องการขาดการมีส่วนร่วมของชุมชนในป่าชุมชน ตามมาตรา 16 ผู้ที่มีอำนาจควบคุมกำกับการจัดการป่าชุมชนไม่ใช่ตัวแทนจากภาคประชาชนที่อยู่ภายในพื้นที่เขตป่าชุมชน แต่เป็นตัวแทนของรัฐจากส่วนกลาง ทำให้ขาดความใกล้ชิดกับสภาพปัญหา สภาพภูมิศาสตร์ และเศรษฐกิจในพื้นที่ รวมถึงวัฒนธรรมความเชื่อ ส่งผลให้ภาคประชาชนไม่ได้ร่วมมือร่วมใจกันในการจัดการควบคุมการใช้และการอนุรักษ์ทรัพยากรธรรมชาติและสิ่งแวดล้อม 5) ประเด็นเรื่องการกระจายอำนาจ (Decentralization) ให้แก่องค์กรปกครองท้องถิ่น ตามพระราชบัญญัติกำหนดแผนและขั้นตอนการกระจายอำนาจให้แก่องค์กรปกครองส่วน ท้องถิ่น พ.ศ. 2542 ในมาตรา 16 (24) บัญญัติให้กระจายอำนาจให้ อบต.หรือเทศบาล มีอำนาจ จัดการ การบำรุงรักษา และการใช้ประโยชน์จากป่าไม้ …

Brief Amici Curiae Legal Scholars Of Sex And Gender In Support Of Plaintiff-Appellant, Kyle Velte, Ezra Young, Jeremiah A. Ho, M. Dru Levasseur, Nancy C. Marcus, Dara E. Purvis, Eliot Tracz, Ann E. Tweedy

All Faculty Scholarship

This amicus brief was filed in Griffith v. El Paso County, Colorado, case no. 23-1135 (10th Circuit) in support of appellant Darlene Griffith. Amici curiae are legal scholars of sex and gender. They offer expertise in their personal capacities to assist the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in assessing whether the El Paso County Sheriff officials violated Ms. Griffith’s Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection when they refused to house Ms. Griffith, a transgender woman, in the women's unit of the El Paso County Jail as a pretrial detainee.

Nonconsensual Family Obligations, Emily Stolzenberg

Faculty Publications

Even as the pandemic has both highlighted and compounded the challenges many U.S. families face in meeting their members’ basic needs, efforts to expand public subsidies for caretaking have gained little traction. Scholars have identified many historical and practical reasons for Americans’ entrenched skepticism toward the welfare state. Ideas matter, too, and this Article uncovers and critiques one that works to limit collective financial responsibility for families: the conviction that family support obligations must be legitimated through consent.

In family law, as in liberal political theory, consent works to reconcile state regulation with individual freedom. But because consent is a …

The Major Questions Doctrine And The Threat To Regulating Emerging Technologies, Johnson, Walter G., Tournas, Lucille M.

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

Emerging technologies offer the potential to improve health and quality of life but also pose notable risks to safety, wellbeing, and equity. Law and technology scholarship posits that robust policy and regulatory strategies in the public interest are required to manage these complex benefits, risks, and uncertainties. At the same time, the Supreme Court in its recent jurisprudence appears eager to revitalize nondelegation legal norms, especially through the major questions doctrine—a shifting administrative law doctrine that increasingly appears to act as a clear statement rule when interpreting statutory grants of authority to regulatory agencies. This article argues the major questions …

Panel 4 - Severe Or Pervasive: Towards Empowering Workers, Allegra Fishel, Joe Sellers, Bernice Yeung, Ann Mcginley, Alexis Ronickher

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

FACILITATOR: All right. We’re back and I wanted to introduce our moderator for our panel, Severe or Pervasive: Towards Empowering Workers. We have Ms. Allegra Fishel moderating. Ms. Fishel is a seasoned civil rights advocate and the founder of The Gender Equality Law Center. So, thank you so much for being here and, Ms. Fishel, I turn it over to you.

Unlocking The Beauty From Within Title Vii: Arguing For An Expansive Interpretation Of Title Vii To Protect Against Attractiveness Discrimination, Michael Conklin

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

Beauty may only be skin deep, but discrimination against the unattractive runs far deeper. Research emphatically demonstrates that attractiveness discrimination affects nearly every aspect of life, including hiring and promotion decisions. For example, personal injury attorneys utilize economists as expert witnesses for how their clients’ reduced attractiveness will negatively affect their future earnings. Attractiveness discrimination is just as prevalent as discrimination based on ethnicity. Unfortunately, current interpretations of federal antidiscrimination legislation do not offer protections from attractiveness discrimination. This Article offers a comprehensive framework for providing such protections under an expansive interpretation of Title VII.

Hair Me Out: Why Discrimination Against Black Hair Is Race Discrimination Under Title Vii, Alexis Boyd

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

In May 2010, Chastity Jones sought employment as a customer service representative at Catastrophe Management Solutions (“CMS”), a claims processing company located in Mobile, Alabama. When asked for an inperson interview, Jones, a Black woman, arrived in a suit and her hair in “short dreadlocks,” or locs, a type of natural hairstyle common in the Black community. Despite being qualified for the position, Jones would later have her offer rescinded because of her hair. CMS claimed that locs “tend to get messy” and violated the “neutral” dress code and hair policy requiring employees to be “professional and business-like.” Therefore, CMS …

Pro-Choice (Of Law): Extraterritorial Application Of State Law Using Abortion As A Case Study, Marnie Leonard

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

Madison Underwood was scheduled to receive a life-saving abortion at a clinic in Tennessee when her doctor told her the procedure had been canceled. The Supreme Court had overturned the constitutional right to abortion a few days prior. Although Underwood’s abortion was still legal in Tennessee, her doctor felt performing the procedure was too risky with the law changing so quickly.

Principle Originalism--The Third Way: A Jurisprudential Response To Dobbs V. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Ryan Fortson

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

All judges attempt to decide cases for reasons other than politics or their own personal opinions. But finding a consistent judicial methodology is fraught with peril. Against what it sees as the hyper-textualism of strict constructionism and the unfettered discretion of living constitutionalism, originalism posits itself as the only viable way to achieve an objectively neutral interpretation of the law. This is certainly the stance taken by the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which claims that the Constitution is silent on abortion and that therefore no corresponding right to abortion exists. But there can be different …

The Collateral Effects Of Reproductive Restrictions: Dispensing Methotrexate Violates Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana, And Missouri's Public Accommondation Laws, Kanta Mendon

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

In 2022, Annie England Noblin routinely went to her local pharmacy to pick up her prescription for Methotrexate, which she used to manage her rheumatoid arthritis. When Noblin attempted to pick up her medication in July 2022, the pharmacist informed her that Walgreens changed its policy regarding Methotrexate after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade led to thirteen states enacting abortion trigger laws.

Racially Motivated Police Brutality Is A Community Public Health Issue In The United States, Darrell Norman Burrell, Sharon L. Burton, Grace E. Mcgrath

Publications

Ongoing global protests against police violence and racism were heightened in 2020 after the deaths of Breana Taylor and George Floyd, whose deaths made headlines worldwide and raised awareness of the Black Lives Matter movement, which targets structural racism and violence against Black people in the USA and abroad. There are many documented links between policing and health-related outcomes, including but not limited to fatal injuries that increase population-specific mortality rates, adverse physiological responses that increase morbidity, psychological stress, arrests, incarcerations, and legal, medical, and funeral bills that cause socioeconomic deprivation, poor school performance, incomplete high-school education and not entering …

The Indian Child Welfare Act In The Multiverse (Review Of Adoptive Couple V. Baby Girl By Matthew L.M. Fletcher And Kathryn E. Fort, In Critical Race Judgements: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions On Race And The Law)), M. Alexander Pearl

Other Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Ali Principles Of The Law Of Family Dissolution: Addressing Inequality Through Functional Regulation, Linda C. Mcclain, Douglas Nejamie

Faculty Scholarship

As part of a volume commemorating the American Law Institute on its centennial, this Essay reflects on the ALI Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution. We show how the Principles’ drafters intervened in cutting-edge issues at a time of flux in family law in ways that elaborated a progressive agenda that would continue to gain traction in the years after the Principles’ publication in 2000. Beginning from the assumption that family law should reflect how people actually live, the drafters developed a functional, rather than formal, approach to legal regulation. Such an approach, they believed, could vindicate commitments to …

Ordered Liberty After Dobbs, Linda C. Mcclain, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores the implications of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization for the future of substantive due process (SDP) liberties protecting personal autonomy, bodily integrity, familial relationships (including marriage), sexuality, and reproduction. We situate Dobbs in the context of prior battles on the Supreme Court over the proper interpretive approach to deciding what basic liberties the Due Process Clause (DPC) protects. As a framing device, we refer to two competing approaches as “the party of [Justice] Harlan or Casey” versus “the party of Glucksberg.” In Dobbs, the dissent co-authored by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan represents the party of …

Family Needs, Family Leave In 2023, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

Instituting support for women and children is a difficult task to imagine in a world that is removing reproductive freedom and healthcare. In this hypothetical, do we treat the removal of abortion care as a force majeure, natural disaster, or an earthquake? If so, after the earthquake, the community bands together and works tirelessly to compensate for what has happened. But the removal of abortion care was not a natural disaster-it was planned, and it is embedded in background conditions that are pushing further away from support for women and children.

The primary task of this Article is to respond …

Forging A Future Title Ix, Naomi M. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

Title IX is in transition. Fifty years after its passage, Title IX is at the center of multiple culture wars, notably those around the definition of sex¹ and the contours of due process² in schools. Since 2011, the federal Department of Education (“ED”) has issued multiple guidance documents, containing widely divergent obligations for schools.³ In the last decade, the meaning of Title IX has been highly contested, appearing sometimes more dependent on the administration in power than on the statute’s text and purpose.⁴ This pendulum swing has diverted attention away from Title IX’s core goal: equal …

Natural Gas And Net Zero: Mutually Exclusive Pathways For The Southeast, Adam D. Orford

Scholarly Works

Climate policy increasingly focuses on pathways to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, providing a clear standard against which to evaluate energy system planning. Examining the current and projected fuel mix of the electric power sector in the southeastern United States shows that an ongoing transition to natural gas for electricity risks locking in decades of greenhouse gas emissions at levels fundamentally incompatible with net zero goals. Furthermore, southeastern regulatory proceedings are not well designed to engage with this reality, although useful regulatory models are emerging. Natural gas will remain an important part of the southeastern fuel mix …

On The Basis Of Childbirth: How The Federal Clerkship's Lack Of Parental Leave Fosters Gender Inequality, Bailey K. Sanders

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay argues that the lack of paid parental leave for federal law clerks enables pregnancy discrimination, restricts women’s reproductive choice, and perpetuates gender inequality within the legal profession. Protections against pregnancy discrimination are hollow when clerks can be fired—or have clerkship offers rescinded—for requiring maternity leave, and the lack of leave disproportionately impacts female clerks by constraining their ability to pursue career and family simultaneously. The lack of leave also restricts (some) pregnant women’s reproductive choice by forcing them to choose between keeping their position or carrying their pregnancy to term. Such a state of affairs was intolerable in …

Can Machines Commit Crimes Under Us Antitrust Laws?, Aslihan Asil, Thomas Wollmann

Faculty Scholarship

Generative artificial intelligence is being rapidly deployed for corporate tasks including pricing. Suppose one of these machines communicates with the pricing manager of a competing firm, proposes to collude, receives assent, and raises price. Is this a crime under U.S. antitrust laws, and, if so, who is liable? Based on the observed behavior of the most widely adopted large language model, we argue that this conduct is imminent, satisfies the requirements for agreement and intent under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, and could confer criminal liability to both firms as well as the pricing manager of the competing firm.

Cryptic Patent Reform Through The Inflation Reduction Act, Arti K. Rai, Rachel E. Sachs, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Faculty Scholarship

If a statute substantially changes the way patents work in an industry where patents are central, but says almost nothing about patents, is it patent reform? We argue the answer is yes — and it’s not a hypothetical question. The Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”) does not address patents, but its drug pricing provisions are likely to prompt major changes in how patents work in the pharmaceutical industry. For many years scholars have decried industry’s ever-evolving strategies that use combinations of patents to block competition for as long as possible, widely known as “evergreening,” but legislators have not been receptive to …

Restating The Law In The Shadow Of Codes: The Ali In Its Formative Era, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter recounts the American Law Institute’s (ALI’s) history in its formative era (1923–1945), drawing from archival sources to deepen existing accounts of the ALI’s self-definition as an ongoing institution. The history is more complex than it appears in prior accounts because institutional necessities—including funding—as well as multiple contingencies shaped both the ALI and its work. Likewise, the ALI’s signal work in this period, the Restatement, departed in significant ways from its original plan. Generating the revenues requisite to its ongoing existence required that the ALI partner with commercial publishers and, at their urging, separately publish Annotations for each Restatement …

The Paradox Of Juridical Secularism: An Illustration Through The Cases Of Sabarimala And Hijab, Sukriti .

National Law School Journal

Secularism in India was imagined in cognisance of religion's entrenchment in the public life of the country as well as in people’s identities. This form of secularism was made possible within the Constitution of India through a broad framing of religious freedoms that was limited by statist concerns such as public order, morality, and health. In the face of rising majoritarianism, secular values are under serious challenge, impacting the right to religious freedom and expression. In the face of this challenge, this article assesses the judiciary’s engagement with religion on issues of discrimination against women. The article contends that the …

Federal Funding Statutes And State-Federal Wildlife Authority: Did Congress Demonstrate A Preference For State Wildlife Management Authority With Pittman-Robertson And Dingell-Johnson?, James Vaughan Branch

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act of 1937 now known as Pittman-Robertson and Federal Aid in Sport Fish Restoration Act of 1950 now known as Dingell-Johnson are federal statutes which stand as the original and perhaps most significant federal funding statutes supporting state wildlife conservation and management. Congress’s decision to pass these statutes may be argued to be a prima facie endorsement of state wildlife agencies (SWA) as the primary managers of wildlife since each statute dedicated substantial federal excise revenue to SWAs. We hypothesized we would find consistent evidence in favor of primary state management authority over wildlife. …

19th Annual Great Defender Of Life Dinner Honoring Gerard V. Bradley And Pregnancy Help Inc. And Celebrating The Overturn Of Roe V. Wade, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

Program contents:

• Anne Manice introduces Nicole Moore, Director of Pregnancy Help, p.33
• Nicole Moore, remarks, p. 34
• Helen Alvaré introduces Gerard V. Bradley, p.35
• Gerard Bradley, remarks, p. 38

“Made To Feel Broken”: Ending Conversion Practices And Saving Transgender Lives, Jennifer Levi, Kevin M. Barry

Faculty Scholarship

There has been a recent unprecedented, coordinated campaign by state governments to deny gender-transition care to transgender youth. It is within this context that Florence Ashley argues in Banning Transgender Conversion Practices: A Legal and Policy Analysis that legislation banning conversion practices is both lifesaving to transgender people directly affected and an important step in securing health and the recognition of dignity for all transgender people. The Authors highly recommend the book as a thoughtful and well-researched look at the issue. They also expand on several topics discussed in the book, including the harm caused by these practices, the constitutionality …

States Of Emergency: Covid-19 And Separation Of Powers In The States, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

No event in recent years has shone a brighter spotlight on state separation of powers than the COVID-19 pandemic. Over a more than two-year period, governors exercised unprecedented authority through suspending laws and regulations, limiting business activities and gatherings, restricting individual movement, and imposing public health requirements. Many state legislatures endorsed these measures or were content to let governors take the lead, but in some states the legislature pushed back, particularly — albeit not only—where the governor and legislative majorities were of different political parties. Some of these conflicts wound up in state supreme courts.

This Essay examines the states’ …

Death Drop: The Roberts Court, Legitimacy, And The Future Of Democracy In The United States, Julie Novkov

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Douglass, Lincoln, And Douglas Before Dred Scott: A Few Thoughts On Freedom, Equality, And Affirmative Action, Henry L. Chambers, Jr.

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.