Digital Commons Network^™

Three Legal Visions Of A ‘Green New Deal’, Michael B. Gerrard, Edward Mctiernan

Faculty Scholarship

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has rocketed to such fame that she is now widely known simply as AOC, and Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), co-father of Waxman-Markey, the cap-and- trade bill that narrowly passed the House in 2009 but died in the Senate, have introduced identical resolutions to create a “Green New Deal.” H. Res. 109, S. Res. 59.

Infrastructural Exclusion And The Fight For The City: Power, Democracy, And The Case Of America's Water Crisis, K. Sabeel Rahman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Incomplete Ecology Of Hydraulic Fracturing Governance, Gregg P. Macey

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Can Clean Energy Policy Promote Environmental, Economic, And Social Sustainability?, Felix Mormann

Faculty Scholarship

Two and a half decades of clean energy policymaking focused primarily on environmental and economic sustainability have yielded considerable environmental and economic benefits. Along the way, however, other policy considerations, such as the social sustainability of the transition to a cleaner, renewably fueled energy economy, have gone largely overlooked. As clean energy technologies continue to gain ever-greater traction in the United States and global energy economies, the social impacts of their enabling policies become more and more salient. Already, ratepayers, taxpayers, and other stakeholders who fear being left behind by the clean energy transition question the “fairness” of today’s renewable …

Es Fema El Problema? Hurricane Maria And The Slow Road To Recovery In Puerto Rico, Clifford J. Villa

Faculty Scholarship

A critical and sympathetic look at FEMA's work in post-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico.

Root And Branch: The Thirteenth Amendment And Environmental Justice, Mehmet K. Konar-Steenberg

Faculty Scholarship

Forty years since the birth of the environmental justice movement, environmental injustice persists. One reason is the failure to identify a viable constitutional root for environmental justice doctrine in either the Fourteenth Amendment or Commerce Clause. Accordingly, this essay argues that the Thirteenth Amendment might provide a fertile environment for a flourishing law of environmental justice.

Part I will describes how environmental justice’s distributive justice vision was at odds with environmental law’s positivist, proceduralist core, and how that difference helps to account for the constitutional difficulties that followed. Part II describe one of those difficulties: the disparate impact problem and …

Bridging The Safe Drinking Water Gap For California’S Rural Poor, Camille Pannu

Faculty Scholarship

Spurred by decades of inaction and continued exposure to unsafe drinking water, community leaders from California’s disadvantaged communities (DACs) advocated for the creation of a human right to water under state law. Shortly thereafter, the California Legislature put forward a bond to finance much needed water infrastructure improvements and drought relief interventions across the state. Voters approved the $7.45 billion bond, which reserved millions of dollars of funding for DACs with persistent water quality problems. In setting aside those funds, the Legislature acknowledged that decades of disinvestment in rural, disadvantaged communities had created severe water contamination, limited water access, and …

The Long Environmental Justice Movement, Jedediah Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

The standpoint of environmental justice has become integral to environmental law in the last thirty years. Environmental justice criticizes mainstream environmental law and advocacy institutions on three main fronts: for paying too little attention to the distributive effects of environmental policy; for emphasizing elite and professional advocacy over participation in decision making by affected communities; and for adhering to a woods-and-waters view of which problems count as “environmental” that disregards the importance of neighborhoods, workplaces, and cities. This Article highlights the existence of a “long environmental justice movement” that, like the long movements for racial equality and labor organizing, put …

Mobilizing International Law In The Palestinian Struggle For Justice, George Bisharat, Jeff Handmaker, Ghada Karmi, Alaa Tartir

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Long Environmental Justice Movement, Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

The standpoint of environmental justice has become integral to environmental law in the last thirty years. Environmental justice criticizes mainstream environmental law and advocacy institutions on three main fronts: for paying too little attention to the distributive effects of environmental policy; for emphasizing elite and professional advocacy over participation in decision making by affected communities; and for adhering to a woods-and-waters view of which problems count as “environmental” that disregards the importance of neighborhoods, workplaces, and cities. This Article highlights the existence of a “long environmental justice movement” that, like the long movements for racial equality and labor organizing, put …

Safeguarding Development: Risk Reduction In Us Government Foreign Aid And Investment Facilitation Beyond The Current Patchwork, Naomi Roht-Arriaza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

An Examination Of Policy Options For Achieving Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions In New Jersey, Gabriel Pacyniak

Faculty Scholarship

An Examination of Policy Options for Achieving Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions in New Jersey surveys emissions and energy trends, describes a “deep decarbonization pathway” for the state, and identifies the types of policies that would be necessary to achieve those reductions. Many of the policies address the power and transportation sectors, which account for more than 60 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions from New Jersey. The report also includes options for improving building efficiency, reducing methane leaks from natural gas infrastructure, restoring natural carbon sinks in forests and wetlands, and incorporating equity considerations to address the needs of frontline …

The Baseline Bar, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Trust Or Bust: Complications With Tribal Trust Obligations And Environmental Sovereignty, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Introduction: The Post-Carbon World: Advances In Legal And Social Theory, Gregg P. Macey

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Two, Three Many Rosas! Rebellious Lawyers And Progressive Activist Organizations, Brian Glick

Faculty Scholarship

The cast of prototypic rebellious lawyers promoted by Gerald Lopez is incomplete. It leaves out a very important mode of lawyering: that of working for a progressive activist organization. To fill that gap, this essay introduces “Rosa,” a lawyer on the staff of an organization of low-wage workers fighting for workplace justice and systemic change. The essay argues that working for such organizations in a way that is accountable to the organizations is an especially effective way for lawyers to contribute to economic, racial, gender, social and environmental justice. It examines three current models of such practice: in-house, in an …

Freedom Of Information Beyond The Freedom Of Information Act, David Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) allows any person to request any agency record for any reason. This model has been copied worldwide and celebrated as a structural necessity in a real democracy. Yet in practice, this Article argues, FOIA embodies a distinctively “reactionary” form of transparency. FOIA is reactionary in a straightforward, procedural sense in that disclosure responds to ad hoc demands for information. Partly because of this very feature, FOIA can also be seen as reactionary in a more substantive, political sense insofar as it saps regulatory capacity; distributes government goods in an inegalitarian fashion; and contributes …

Overreach And Innovation In Equality Regulation, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

At a time of heightened concern about agency overreach, this Article highlights a less appreciated development in agency equality regulation. Moving beyond traditional bureaucratic forms of regulation, civil rights agencies in recent years have experimented with new forms of regulation to advance inclusion. This new "inclusive regulation" can be described as more open ended, less coercive, and more reliant on rewards, collaboration, flexibility, and interactive assessment than traditional modes of civil rights regulation. This Article examines the power and limits of this new inclusive regulation and suggests a framework for increasing the efficacy of these new modes of regulation.

International Environmental Law And The Global South Edited By Shawket Alam, Sumudu Atapattu, Carmen G. Gonzalez, And Jona Razzaque, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Flint Drinking Water Contamination: Frames Of Reference, Clifford J. Villa

Faculty Scholarship

Presentation given at Harvard Law School on Flint, Michigan, lead toxicity and what we can do as a matter of law.

Being Good Lawyers: A Relational Approach To Law Practice, Eli Wald, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

In response to past generations of debates regarding whether law is a business or profession, we advance an alternative approach that rejects the dichotomies of business and profession, or hired gun and wise counselor. Instead, we propose a relational account of law practice. Unlike frameworks grounded in assumptions of atomistic individualism or communitarianism, a relational perspective recognizes that all actors, whether individuals or organizations, have separate identities yet are intrinsically inter-connected and cannot maximize their own good in isolation. Through the lens of relational self-interest, maximizing the good of the individual or business requires consideration of the good of the …

Presidential Legitimacy Through The Anti-Discrimination Lens, Catherine Y. Kim

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The New Nature, Jedediah S. Purdy, Jo Guildi, Jairus Grove, Robert Paarlberg, Andreas Malm, David Keith, Anna Tsing, Ugo Mattei, Vandana Shiva, Paul Waldau, Roy Scranton

Faculty Scholarship

First came the insight that politics was not an outgrowth of organic hierarchy or divine ordination but instead an artifice – an architecture of power planned only by human beings. [...] was the recognition that economic order does not arise from providential design, natural rights to property and contract, or a grammar of cooperation inherent, like language, in the human mind. First is the Anthropocene condition: the massive increase in human impacts on everything from the upper atmosphere to the deep sea and the DNA of the world's species. [...] closely related, is the movement's interest not just in the …

Beyond Lifestyle: Governing The Social Determinants Of Health, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

Non-communicable and chronic diseases have overtaken infectious diseases as the major causes of death and disability around the world. Despite recognition that reduction in the chronic disease burden will require governance systems to address the social determinants of health, most public health recommendations emphasize individual behavior as the primary cause of illness and the target of intervention. This Article argues that focusing on lifestyle can backfire, by increasing health inequities and inviting human rights violations. If States fail to take meaningful steps to alter the social and economic structures that create health risks and encourage unhealthy behavior, health at the …

A Quiet Revolution: Mindfulness, Rebellious Lawyering And Community Practice, Thalia Gonzalez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Walking Is A Right (Civil And Human), Robert Bullard

Faculty Scholarship

PowerPoint opening keynote presented at the National Walking Summit in Washington, DC last month. Here is link to the Summit. http://walkingsummit.org/keynote-speakers . Some of themes include - walking as a right, "outdoor apartheid," "walking while black," and connecting nature walks and health (walking is good for the mind, body, spirit and soul) run through the talk.

Boundary Work In Environmental Law, Gregg P. Macey

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Environmental Justice In Maryland, Environmental Law Clinic, Jane F. Barrett, Matthew Peters, Hilary Jacobs, Jason Rubinstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Interim Payments And Economic Damages To Compensate Private-Party Victims Of Hazardous Releases, Julie E. Steiner

Faculty Scholarship

There is a gap in tort recovery for many hazardous release victims. Hazardous spill victims receive different damage compensation based solely upon the type of hazardous substance released, with oil spill victims benefitting from a number of statutory damage recovery mechanisms that victims of other type of hazardous substance releases do not receive. Specifically, those injured by oil spills receive interim payments and recover for their economic loss. Yet, many victims injured by non-oil hazardous spills will incur economic harm but will not receive compensation because of a prohibition on recovery for economic loss absent accompanying physical injury or private …

Multidimensional Advocacy As Applied: Marriage Equality And Reproductive Rights, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Talking about marriage equality and reproductive rights advocacy together presents an interesting, and sometimes puzzling, assortment of challenges and opportunities. Both involve efforts to secure legal protections and social recognition that are fundamentally important to those who need them yet also deeply provocative to their opponents. For both, too, advocacy takes place on a shifting terrain shaped by competing views of sexuality, autonomy, equality, personhood, and more.

Yet the two advocacy efforts have experienced very different receptions over time. Just over two decades ago, the Supreme Court expressly affirmed that women have a constitutional right to seek an abortion and …