Digital Commons Network^™

The Political Economy Of Fashion Sustainability Regulation, Meital Peleg Mizrachi, Rachel Chambers

UC Law Business Journal

The global fashion industry is one of the world’s most polluting and exploitative sectors, emitting more greenhouse gases than all international flights and maritime shipping combined, driving extensive water contamination and waste, and relying on labor conditions that remain chronically unsafe and underpaid. Regulation has attempted to respond, but with limited success. Existing sustainability oversight—ranging from import bans and human rights due diligence statutes to environmental taxes and voluntary industry frameworks—remains fragmented and unevenly enforced, shaped by geopolitical tensions, protectionist agendas, and shifting policy priorities. This Article reviews the rapidly evolving landscape of fashion sustainability regulation over the past decade …

Ecocide In Palestine: A Call For A New Criminal Designation For Environmental Crimes, Carley A. Bomrad

UC Law Environmental Journal

Gaza has frequently been the target of environmental damage from Israel. Dating back to its immigration to Palestine, Israel has impacted Palestine’s water systems, destroyed its natural landscape, and forcibly changed much of the landscape through invasive species. This environmental harm is only worsened by the repeated conflict in the region, which has damaged infrastructure and water systems and caused contamination of air, water, and soil. Gaza was already struggling with these environmental concerns, coupled with its susceptibility to climate change, when the conflict with Israel intensified in October 2023. All progress that was being made to strengthen Gaza’s infrastructure …

Masthead

UC Law Environmental Journal

No abstract provided.

The Esg Disclosure Paradox: Gaps In Environmental Justice Criteria, Barbara Ballan

UC Law Environmental Journal

Environmental Justice (“EJ”) and Environmental Social Governance (“ESG”) are terms used to address the impacts of corporate actions as well as environmental and social regulation on the people and the planet. ESG disclosure is a corporate-driven invention that aims to measure progress towards sustainability and disclose environmental and social criteria while fostering value for businesses. EJ, by contrast, emerged as a social movement that evolved into regulatory frameworks. Governmental agencies and EJ advocates are utilizing EJ mapping tools and metrics to assess inequalities in environmental impacts caused by private and public policy and decision-making. Though these concepts may initially create …

Retrenchment, Segregation, And Public Education: A Five-Year Analysis Of State Exclusionary School Discipline Legislation, Thalia Gonzalez, Will Martel

Faculty Scholarship

Notwithstanding the decision in Brown v. Board of Education formally ending educational segregation and more than two decades of state reform, the legislative landscape protecting minoritized children from the structural violence of exclusionary school discipline has dramatically shifted in less than five years. From the passage of state “Teacher’s Bills of Rights” to mandatory expulsions, rescissions of prior protections, and new categories of removal, a retrenchment of anti-inclusion legislation—and its corollary, educational carcerality— has occurred. While studies of other forms of legislative retrenchment in K–12 public schools, such as anti-Critical Race Theory and Don’t Say Gay laws, literacy bans, and …

The Forever Fight Against Forever Chemicals: Analyzing Loopholes In California’S Pfas Ban For Consumer Products, Jake B. Goldman

UC Law Journal

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of synthetic chemicals used for their unique qualities in manufacturing across numerous industries. PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” persist in the environment for long periods of time and cause serious health risks to consumers. Given mounting research on PFAS and their adverse health effects, the California legislature passed four laws banning the chemicals in specific consumer products.

This Note argues that three new California laws requiring manufacturers to replace PFAS with “the least toxic alternative” are inadequate because they are ambiguous. This ambiguity will invite litigation and create business challenges by …

The Inequitable Impacts Of Sea Level Rise: How East Palo Alto Serves As Both A Warning And Beacon Of Hope For Coastal Communities, Justin Capone

UC Law Environmental Journal

As sea level rise and coastal flooding continue to threaten communities globally, the impacts on shoreline residents will not be distributed equally. Projections of physical damage do not account for other environmental and socioeconomic contexts that overlap to disproportionately burden the most vulnerable communities. East Palo Alto, a city that regularly suffers from destructive flooding, is at high monetary and social risk from sea level rise due to a history of racially discriminatory practices that contributed to residents’ current socioeconomic disadvantage. This inequity poses a distinct environmental justice issue, requiring adaptation strategies that place the city’s environmental burden within past …

Ratemaking’S Trilemma And The Case For Time-Based Electricity Rates, Kyle J. Blasinsky

UC Law Environmental Journal

Ratemaking has a trilemma. How should utilities and policymakers balance the competing goals of ratemaking: sufficiency, efficiency, and equity? Sufficiency is principally a legal constraint that creates a revenue floor during ratemakings to address concerns about unconstitutional takings. The latter goals—efficiency and equity—have fewer legal limitations but compel important policy tradeoffs when designing rate structures for electricity consumers. Recently, technological ad-vancements and shifting social priorities have prompted a rebalancing of these seemingly conflicting goals. New technologies have made time-based electricity rates a viable means of demand response in many communities, reducing the need for expensive and polluting peaker plants and …

Epigenetics, Preconception Tort Liability, And Public Health, Peter Sie

UC Law Journal

Epigenetics is an emerging science that studies how our behavior and environment can change the function of our genes without changing our genetic code. These changes can pass on to our children and grandchildren, for better or for worse. Epigenetic knowledge could change our understanding of human biology and individual responsibility. However, it is also ripe for misunderstanding. Commercial entities seek to capitalize on the hype to sell snake oil under the “epigenetic” label. In the popular press, reporters dramatize limited studies to create sensational headlines, often blaming parents for causing epigenetic harms to their children.

If this attitude toward …

California’S Bug Problem: The Backup Generation Information Gap And Its Impact On Vulnerable Communities, Andrew H. Jacobs

UC Law Journal

California’s electricity system has faced unprecedented challenges in recent years. Extreme heat, wildfires, and additional severe weather events stressed the system to a breaking point. The state’s electric grid operator repeatedly called for rolling blackouts on hot summer days to preserve the integrity of the electric grid. Electric utilities proactively shut off power during dry and windy conditions to prevent their equipment from sparking wildfires. Strings of powerful winter storms left hundreds of thousands across the state without power for multiple days.

In response to the poor reliability of the electrical grid, demand for backup generation has skyrocketed. Both residents …

The Disproportionate Burden On Vulnerable Communities In The Trade Of Plastic Waste: How Environmental Justice Should Be Integrated Into The United Nations Treaty On Plastic Pollution, Jackson Moffett

UC Law Environmental Journal

The United Nations Environment Assembly passed a resolution to end plastic pollution with a legally binding treaty in response to growing international concern over the destruction of the environment and human health from plastic pollution. Plastic waste disposal is currently regulated under the Plastic Waste Amendments of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal (Basel Convention), which subjects it to prior informed consent (PIC) and the environmentally sound management of waste (ESM). Unfortunately, the increasing amount of plastic production and limited number of recycling facilities around the world have rendered the Basel …

Editors’ Foreword, Ivan Ditmars, Gaby Salazar Kitner

UC Law Environmental Journal

No abstract provided.

Environmental Law: The Negotiable Implementation Of Environmental Law, Dave Owen

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

Local Restrictions On Renewable Energy Siting In The United States, Jesse Honig

UC Law Journal

Climate change has arrived. The next decade will provide critical opportunities to avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change. The decisions we take over the next ten years will be the difference between moderate levels of warming and warming that will cause catastrophic changes to the planet. To avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change, the United States must rapidly transition the energy sector to almost entirely renewable energy. Notwithstanding the rapid growth of renewable energy over the past decade, the United States must add renewable capacity at an unprecedented rate. To meet this challenge, many states have …

An Electronics Eco-Labeling System For Reducing Toxic Wastewater Runoff In The Tijuana River Estuary, Keari Platt

UC Law Environmental Journal

The wastewater pollution crisis at the United States-Mexico border garners renewed attention every few decades as sewage and toxic runoff overburden treatment facilities in the border region, polluting the Southern San Diego County coastline. Following several years of increasingly catastrophic sewage discharge incidents, the City of Imperial Beach filed suit against the federal government, alleging that the United States Section of the International Boundary Water Commission’s frequent discharge of pollutants into the Tijuana River violated the federal Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The lawsuit prodded the federal government to appropriate $300 million to the Environmental …

“Free Speech, Academic Freedom, And Racial Justice On Campus: An Aclu Lawyer’S Perspective”, Emerson Sykes

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Prefatory Matter

UC Law Environmental Journal

No abstract provided.

Dikos Nitsaa’Igii-19 (“The Big Cough”): Coal, Covid-19, And The Navajo Nation, Warigia M. Bowman

UC Law Journal

Both in an absolute sense, and in a comparative sense, COVID-19 is infecting and killing people inside of Navajo Nation at a higher rate than in nearby states. This Article investigates how U.S. energy or mineral extraction policy—particularly regarding coal and uranium— weakened Navajo health and may have contributed to the COVID-19 infection crisis on Navajo. The relationship between U.S. mineral extraction and the health vulnerabilities currently being exposed on the Nation raise issues of administrative law, Indian law, and finally, Tribal and federal governance. This Article also contributes to the literature in environmental justice, natural resources law, and energy …

Prefatory Matter

UC Law Environmental Journal

No abstract provided.

Centering Environmental Justice In California: Attempts And Opportunities In Ceqa, Lena Freij

UC Law Environmental Journal

Environmental justice communities and advocates have used the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) as a necessary tool to incorporate their concerns into agency decision-making. However, environmental justice is neither mentioned in the statutory language of CEQA, nor was it intended as a fundamental purpose of CEQA as an environmental review statute. Thus, in order to understand where CEQA reform would be most successful in serving communities that are disproportionately impacted by environmental burdens, CEQA’s history must be evaluated with comprehensive principles of environmental justice. As such, this paper explores why and how environmental justice principles can and should be implemented …

The Green Police In The Golden State: An Analysis Of The Criminal Enforcement Of Environmental Law In The State Of California, Joshua Ozymy, Melissa Jarrell Ozymy

UC Law Environmental Journal

The use of criminal enforcement tools is necessary for deterring and punishing environmental offenses involving significant harm or culpable conduct. Yet we have very limited empirical knowledge of how the criminal enforcement of environmental laws has functioned historically in the Golden State. Through content analysis of prosecution summaries for every federal criminal investigation undertaken by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the State of California that led to criminal prosecution, 1983-2019, we are able to provide a comprehensive account of what laws are violated, how prosecutors charge environmental criminals, and how these criminals are sentenced, illustrating broader themes in …

Transactional Community Lawyering, Alina S. Ball

Faculty Scholarship

The racial reckoning during the summer of 2020 presented a renewed call to action for movement lawyers committed to collaborating with mobilized clients to advance racial equity and economic justice. During the last thirty years, community lawyering scholarship has made significant interventions into poverty lawyering and provides the theoretical framework for contemporary movement lawyers. Conceptually, community lawyering theory can be implemented in any practice area; however, prevailing narratives and models for community lawyering are based on group advocacy campaigns and, to a lesser extent, individual representation in dispute resolution. Transactional lawyers—who use private ordering to represent business entities as they …

Law In The Service Of Misinformation: How Anti-Vaccine Groups Use The Law To Help Spin A False Narrative, Dorit R. Reiss, Viridiana Ordonez

Faculty Scholarship

Social movements use legal tools to create narratives. Those narratives support social agendas which certain movements leverage to mislead their followers and potential followers. In this Article, we examine one influential anti-vaccine organization, the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), that uses its far-reaching platform to create false narratives around legal action. Again and again, this anti-vaccine group misrepresented both the legal and the factual meanings of court decisions, settlements, and other legal actions to create a narrative to galvanize its followers and influence newcomers. ICAN filed lawsuits that make anti-vaccine arguments—even when the legal framework did not fit doing so—and …

The Negotiable Implementation Of Environmental Law, Dave Owen

Faculty Scholarship

tional wisdom describes environmental law as a field filled with rigid mandates. ith that rigidity as a key premise, and they allege that inflexibility is a central failing or, alternatively, a squandered virtue. Influential reform proposals follow from both allegations. This Article demonstrates that these premises are often mistaken. Based on literature reviews and interviews with environmental-law practitioners, it shows that flexibility pervades environmental law, and regulators, regulated entities, and other interest groups routinely use negotiations to navigate that flexibility. Indeed, negotiation is so central to the field that one cannot understand environmental law, either in theory or practice, without …

Prefatory Matter

UC Law Environmental Journal

No abstract provided.

Nepa’S Teeth: How To Challenge Chemical And Fossil Fuel Complexes Using A Climate And Environmental Justice Argument, Camilla Getz

UC Law Environmental Journal

Flooding and sea level rise in the United States is projected to become more frequent and severe due to climate change. Such climate events increase the risk of chemical spills into the environment, which disproportionally impact the health of low-income communities and communities of color. Despite international agreement that climate change is an immediate threat that endangers human health and the environment, the United States does not have a national climate policy, but rather a few bedrock environmental laws where climate policy is mentioned. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is one such law. NEPA includes a provision for the …

Prioritizing Tree Planting In Shade-Deprived Urban Areas As A Response To Climate Change, Susana María Aguilera

UC Law Environmental Journal

This paper discusses the planting of trees in areas where tree canopy is lacking as both mitigation and adaptation measures to climate change. I argue that cities must prioritize planting trees in low-income neighborhoods as a form of mitigation from extreme heat because those areas tend to be hotter than wealthier areas of the same city. The shade provided by trees will cool the area and reduce health impacts and mortality during extreme heat events. Section I discusses the urban heat island effect and how redlining is directly connected to low tree canopy. Section II highlights initiatives cities have taken …

Bart: The Enron Of Public Transit The Need For Csr In U.S. Public Transportation, Nicole Mirkazemi

UC Law Business Journal

No abstract provided.

Protecting Cultural Heritage By Recourse To International Environmental Law: Chinese Stances On Faultless State Liability, Riccardo Vecellio Segate

UC Law Environmental Journal

Several international policy documents define the environment as made of “natural heritage” and “cultural heritage” together, along the lines of concepts such as “biosphere” or “ecosystem” which have been introduced relatively recently to define the complexity of humanenvironment interactions. Nevertheless, distinguishing natural heritage from the cultural one helps analyse situations where damage inflicted to the former negatively impacts the latter. In fact, cultural heritage sits under siege worldwide due to polluting activities and environmental degradation, which are causing irreparable damage to—or even the disappearance of— valuable expressions of civilisations’ legacy. Most damages are transboundary, thereby calling into question bilateral forms …

Shining A Light On High Seas Transhipment: The Need To Strengthen Observer Reporting Of Transhipments In The Western And Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, Chris Wold, Alfred “Bubba” Cook

UC Law Environmental Journal

No abstract provided.