Digital Commons Network^™

Arctic Justice: Addressing Persistent Organic Pollutants, Elizabeth Burleson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article recommends enhanced governance of persistent organic pollutants through incentives to develop environmentally sound, climate friendly technologies as well as caution in developing the Arctic. It highlights the toxicity challenges presented by POPs to Arctic people and ecosystems.

The Rio+20 Process: Forward Movement For The Environment?, Ann Powers

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This commentary summarizes the events at the recent UN Conference on Sustainable Development, commonly referred to as Rio+20, noting both the role of official national delegations and the diversity of non-state parties that were involved in a variety of venues at and around Rio+20. It sketches the background of sustainable development efforts, maps the road from the original 1992 Rio Earth Summit to the 20th anniversary gathering, and comments on the Conference’s outcomes and their implications for international law and legal institutions. In answer to the much debated question of whether the Rio+20 was a success or a failure, or …

Making Sand Castles As The Tide Comes In: Legal Aspects Of Climate Justice, Elizabeth Burleson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Achieving climate justice and the Millennium Development Goals (“MDGs”)2 are mutually reinforcing challenges. The achievement of both is well within the capacity of the international community. Indeed, reaching carbon neutrality in an affordable, environmentally sound way requires integrating the strategies of mitigation, adaptation, sustainable development, and disaster risk management.

Capturing Individual Harms, Katrina Fischer Kuh

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The aggregated lifestyles and behaviors of individuals impose significant environmental harms yet remain largely unregulated. A growing literature recognizes the environmental significance of individual behaviors, critiques the failure of environmental law and policy to capture harms traceable to individual behaviors, and suggests and evaluates strategies for capturing individual harms going forward. This Article contributes to the existing literature by approaching the problem of environmentally significant individual harms through the lens of environmental federalism. Using climate change and individual greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions as an exemplar, the Article illustrates how local information, local governments, and local implementation can enhance policies designed …

Public Trust Limits On Greenhouse Gas Trading Schemes: A Sustainable Middle Ground?, Karl S. Coplan

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

There is a some consensus among economists, environmentalists, and politicians that some form of “cap and trade’ program is the appropriate regulatory mechanism to achieve the greenhouse gas emissions reductions necessary to avoid disastrous global climate disruptions. “Cap and trade” programs necessarily incorporate tradable emissions rights – essentially tradable rights to pollute. As such, they run into principled objection by some environmentalists who oppose the notion of creating economic rights in the global commons – essentially the “right to pollute.” This principled objection derives doctrinal support from the public trust doctrine – the ancient notion rooted in common law and …

Non-State Actor Access And Influence In International Legal And Policy Negotiations, Elizabeth Burleson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article analyzes the importance of increasing civil society actor access to and influence in international legal and policy negotiations, drawing from academic scholarship on governance, conservation and environmental sustainability, natural resource management, observations of civil society actors, and the authors’ experiences as participants in international environmental negotiations.

Transcript of panel discussion at McGill University, March 26, 2010. This piece is based on the article Elizabeth Burleson & Diana Pei Wu, Non-State Actor Access and Influence in International Legal and Policy Negotiations, 21 Fordham Envtl. L. Rev. 193 (2010).

Siting Green Infrastructure: Legal And Policy Solutions To Alleviate Urban Poverty And Promote Healthy Communities, Alexandra Dapolito Dunn

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Green infrastructure is an economically and environmentally viable approach for water management and natural resource protection in urban areas. This Article argues that green infrastructure has additional and exceptional benefits for the urban poor which are not frequently highlighted or discussed. When green infrastructure is concentrated in distressed neighborhoods—where it frequently is not—it can improve urban water quality, reduce urban air pollution, improve public health, enhance urban aesthetics and safety, generate green collar jobs, and facilitate urban food security. To make these quality of life and health benefits available to the urban poor, it is essential that urban leaders remove …

Investment In Water And Wastewater Infrastructure: An Environmental Justice Challenge, A Governance Solution, Alexandra Dapolito Dunn

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article evaluates the impact of the growing presence of privatized water and wastewater infrastructure projects in some of the world’s most populous countries: China, India, the United States, Brazil, and Nigeria. Together, these nations account for nearly 50 percent of the world’s population. The article discusses environmental justice issues associated with contaminated drinking water and insufficient sanitation and explores the role that public versus private ownership of water infrastructure plays in ensuring access to clean water for the lower-income echelons of society. It articulates the importance of the rule of law and sound environmental governance in this arena and …

Practically Grounded: Convergence Of Land Use Law Pedagogy And Best Practices, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The changing dynamics in the field of land use and sustainable community development law demand that land use law professors rethink the way in which we prepare law students to practice law in this area. This needed paradigm shift converges with the growing momentum of the best practices movement which urges law schools to dramatically revise the curricular approach to legal education, arguing that traditional models are no longer effectively serving the goal of producing competent and fully prepared new lawyers. A perfect storm is present and a unique opportunity exists through the application of many “best practices” concepts for …

Climate Change Consensus: Emerging International Law, Elizabeth Burleson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Non-State Actor Access And Influence In International Legal And Policy Negotiations, Elizabeth Burleson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Using Local Knowledge To Shrink The Individual Carbon Footprint, Katrina Fischer Kuh

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Entire texts have been devoted to exploring the meaning of the term “lifestyle” and sociological understandings of lifestyle are complex and nuanced.For present purposes, however, a more simple articulation of the term will suffice. Lifestyle can mean “mode of living,” including “patterns of action” and “patterns of ways of living.” Without rendering judgment, one observation that can fairly be made about the current lifestyles and associated behaviors of Americans is that they indirectly and directly lead to the emission of a high volume of greenhouse gases (“GHGs”).⁷ Although an American diplomat is said to have remarked in preparing for …

A River Beckons Home, Alexandra Dapolito Dunn

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Environmentalism And The Wisconsin Constitution, Jason J. Czarnezki

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

With its abundance of natural resources and due to the state's strong environmental policies, Wisconsin has “enjoyed a reputation as a state rich in natural beauty and recreational opportunities.” Yet, despite the state's strong environmental protections, some based upon constitutional principles, this Article addresses whether Wisconsin's environmental constitutional provisions can be improved upon. This Article attempts to evaluate the existing environmental provisions in the Wisconsin Constitution, and considers, looking at a variety of options and sources, whether the state should proceed forward with any changes, minor or major, to environmental law in the Wisconsin Constitution. This Article considers expansion of …

Revisiting The Tense Relationship Between The U.S. Supreme Court, Administrative Procedure, And The National Environmental Policy Act, Jason J. Czarnezki

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article addresses the possibility, under the prevailing understanding of NEPA, that an agency might draft a comprehensive report containing information about potential environmental effects and alternate approaches to a proposed plan--and then wholly disregard all of this information in making its final decision. Although an agency may contend that it has “considered” the environmental consequences of alternative courses of action, what if these factors have no actual impact on its final decision? Hypothetically, an agency could simply “steamroll” toward its preferred decision, hurdling NEPA's procedural obstacles without genuinely considering potential environmental harms or the means to avoid them.

This …

Champions Of Change: Reinventing Democracy Through Land Law Reform, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores the prospects of achieving policy coherence in the field of land use regulation. It explains how, as municipal governments react to pressures and crises at the local level, they discover and adopt new strategies in a constant process of experimentation. Through a properly constructed legal framework, critical information can be relayed from local to higher levels of government, state and federal legislators and judges can respond, and a "system" of law can evolve. Using theories developed in the fields of systems analysis and diffusion of innovations, the Article describes the process by which local communities perceive land …

Despite Alarmists, 'Kelo' Decision Protects Property Owners And Serves The General Good, John R. Nolon, Jessica A. Bacher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The United States Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London, has spurred national debate, as many people portray the court’s decision as a damaging blow to private property rights. In Kelo, the court confirmed local government’s ability to condemn property in an area designated as blighted by the state, in order to encourage economic development. This article highlights several positive examples of this sort of condemnation in New York case law, where the public interest was served by economic redevelopment. The article goes further, to distinguish several legal decisions from Kelo, where courts invalidated condemnations upon a …

Environmental Accountability And Public Involvement, Leroy C. Paddock

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

In Praise Of Parochialism: The Advent Of Local Environmental Law, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article explains the role that local governments have assumed in protecting the environment, explores the means by which they have obtained their authority to do so, and discusses how this enhanced municipal role should influence environmental and land use policy at the federal and state level. Part II reviews federal efforts to control nonpoint source pollution, and identifies the constraints on federal action. Among these constraints is the national understanding that the power to control the private use of land is a state prerogative, one that has been delegated, in most states, to local governments. Part III describes how …

Introduction: Considering The Trend Toward Local Environmental Law, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this symposium issue of the Pace Environmental Law Review we take a close look at the advent of local environmental law. With the editors of the Review and a number of distinguished scholars and practitioners, we define what this new field is and consider what it means for public policy and the practice of law. The intent of this issue is to invite lawyers, scholars, practitioners, legislators, regulators, students, and citizen leaders to consider this burgeoning new field: local environmental law. It is my task to introduce the reader to the field and frame the issues for its further …

Comparative Environmental Law Perspectives On Legal Regimes For Sustainable Development, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

As the world's largest summit meeting ended in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the heads of state and their representatives assembled at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), commonly referred to as Agenda 21. They embraced Agenda 21 as “a dynamic programme” which can “evolve over time in the light of changing needs and circumstances,” and as a process making “the beginning of a new global partnership for sustainable development.” Agenda 21 is premised on two factual perspectives. First, the documentation of trends in the deterioration of the environmental conditions in many parts of the world is …

Reducing Nitrogen Pollution On Long Island Sound: Is There A Place For Pollutant Trading?, Ann Powers

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to examine the legal adequacy of proposals now under consideration for a nitrogen trading program on Long Island Sound, and to assess the likelihood of success in light of the experience with other trading programs, both for water and air pollution. Part I outlines the current environmental condition of Long Island Sound and explains the factors which have led proponents of trading to believe such a program could be effective. In Part II we consider the essential elements of a trading program, and the lessons to be learned from the Clean Air Act programs. …