Digital Commons Network^™

Toward Better Bubbles And Future Lives: A Progressive Response To The Conservative Agenda For Reforming Environmental Law, Rena I. Steinzor

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Bad Science, Linda Greer, Rena I. Steinzor

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Racial Justice: Moral Or Political?, Kendall Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

Nearly one hundred years ago, W.E.B. DuBois predicted that the problem of the 20th century would be the problem of the color line. Were he writing today, DuBois might well conclude that in the U.S., the problem of the coming century will be the problem of the color-bind. Although Americans arguably remain "the most 'race-conscious' people on earth," our national conversation about "race" now stands at an impasse. Our ways of talking, or refusing to talk, about race increasingly speak past the racialized dilemmas of educational equity, affirmative action, poverty, welfare reform, housing, lending, labor and employment discrimination, health …

Environmental Justice In An Era Of Devolved Collaboration , Sheila R. Foster

Faculty Scholarship

Environmental decision-making is undergoing a profound shift. Traditional forums and processes are being displaced by mechanisms emphasizing local, "place-based" decision-making. These emerging decision-making mechanisms are orchestrated through collaborative processes featuring stakeholders from both the public and private sectors. This transformation is evident in a number of recent governmental initiatives, including those by the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA"), most notably its Community-Based Environmental Protection ("CBEP") initiative. Other federal agencies, particularly those with land or species management responsibilities, have similarly advocated a greater role for local decision-makers and collaborative problem-solving. This Article examines the points of convergence and divergence between devolved collaboration …

Farmworkers As An Environmental Justice Issue: Similarities And Differences, Eileen Gauna

Faculty Scholarship

This paper endeavors to situate farmworker issues within a broader context of issues in environmental regulation. Environmental regulation is itself a subset of a broader universe of environmental justice concerns. In approaching the issue this way, the author highlights some of the similarities farmworker issues share with other regulatory environmental justice issues. The author highlights the dramatic differences as well. Leaving to others the task of describing the dire conditions of the farmworker, the author takes two important examples of regulatory mechanisms designed to protect farmworkers and describe some of the commonalities. The two sites of regulatory activity used are …

From Harlem To Havana: Sustainable Urban Development Symposium - Environmental Law And Sustainable Development , Sheila R. Foster

Faculty Scholarship

Consider two remarkable places: Harlem, New York and Old Havana, Cuba. These are two different neighborhoods, cities, countries, political systems, economies, and cultures. Yet these two neighborhoods are bound together by a common phenomenon unlimited by geography or differences in political and economic systems. The global prosperity of the last two decades has created historic opportunities to usher in development and revitalization efforts in neglected urban areas across the world! Governments, along with the private sector, have moved capital back to cities or neighborhoods that became endangered from years of disinvestment, lack of economic opportunities, and inadequate access to essential …

The Invisible Patient (Reviewing Sally Satel, How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine (2000)), Barbara A. Noah

Faculty Scholarship

Despite the fact that African-Americans suffer from a variety of health problems at disproportionately higher rates than whites, inequities in the medical system make access to care more difficult for minorities. The problem of racial disparities in health care encompasses more than problems of access or payment, however. Communication difficulties between physician and patient and disparate provision of services covered by insurance also may contribute substantially to health disparities between the races. This review canvasses some of the evidence of differential medical treatment and offers some suggestions that may improve the quality of communication between physicians and patients. In addition …

The Future Of Civil Rights: A Dialogue, Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

Eight social science, humanities, and legal scholars discuss a wide range of perspectives on civil rights (edited by John Paul Ryan). The conversation traverses civil rights stories in the U.S. and abroad since 1968, the relationships between immigration and civil rights, the enforcement of civil rights and the role of the courts, and the impact of September 11 on civil rights in the future. Co-authored with John Paul Ryan, Angelo Ancheta, Erik Bleich, Tim Borstelmann, Gloria Browne-Marshall, Chai Feldblum, Anita Hodgkiss, & John D. Skrentny

The Community Economic Development Movement, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Within a five-minute walk of the Stony Brook subway stop in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, you can encounter the following:

• A renovated industrial site of about five acres and sixteen buildings that serves as a business incubator for small firms that receive technical assistance from the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation (JPNDC), a nonprofit community development corporation, which is also housed there. Known as the Brewery after its former proprietor, a beer-maker, the complex is owned by a nonprofit subsidiary of JPNDC.
• A 44,000-foot "Stop & Shop" supermarket. The market opened in 1991 after years in which the …

Foreword, Dave Owen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Positionality, Epistemology, And Social Justice In The Classroom, David Takacs

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mary Joe Frug's Postmodern Feminist Legal Manifesto Ten Tears Later: Reflections On The State Of Feminism Today, Elizabeth M. Schneider, Regina Austin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Hormesis Challenge For Environmental Health Regulators, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

The hormesis hypothesis provides that human, animal or plant exposure to a low external dose of a hazardous chemical substance or physical agent may have beneficial health outcomes'. For example, human exposure to a precisely defined, low external dose of a carcinogenic pollutant in the workplace or ambient environment may lead to an internal dose or concentration, which stimulates a dormant defense mechanism that inhibits the growth of tumors.

Epa At Thirty: Fairness In Environmental Protection, Eileen Gauna

Faculty Scholarship

This Article looks at how EPA is managing the fairness issue in a discrete but highly charged context: permit issuances that affect heavily impacted communities. This Article first provides a discussion of how fairness-oriented reform might evolve within the permit process. This section also examines permit issuances that were appealed to the U.S. Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) on environmental justice grounds. Proceeding one step beyond environmental law, the Article looks at how EPA is responding to claims of disparate impact under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. However, rather than focus on the intricacies of legal doctrine under Title …

A Survey Of Federal Agency Responses To President Clinton’S Executive Order Number 12898 On Environmental Justice, Eileen Gauna, Denis Binder, Colin Crawford, M. Casey Jarman, Alice Kaswan, Catherine A. O'Neill, Clifford Rechtschaffen, Bradford C. Mank, Robert R.M. Verchick

Faculty Scholarship

In an effort to address the well-documented and serious problem of environmental justice in the United States, President William J. Clinton issued Executive Order (EO) No. 128981 on February 11, 1994. The EO represented the culmination of a century of rapid changes in society's attitudes toward the placement of hazardous facilities in poor, disadvantaged, and minority communities, as well as the denial of services to these communities. This survey examines the impact of the EO on federal agencies. Environmental justice is not a problem unique to the late 20th century. Majoritarian societies have historically discriminated against minority groups.3 For example, …

Rescuing Paha Sapa: Achieving Environmental Justice By Restoring The Great Grasslands And Returning The Sacred Black Hills To The Great Sioux Nation, John P. Lavelle

Faculty Scholarship

Looking at a unique proposal of the Conservation Alliance of the Great Plains for establishing a "Greater Black Hills Wildlife Protected Area" in the Northern Plains region. Especially in light of the proposal's potential impacts on the continuing efforts of the Sioux tribes of this region to secure the return of the sacred Black Hills to sovereign tribal ownership.

Secondary Effects Of Environmental Justice Litigation: The Case Of West Dallas Coalition For Environmental Justice V. Epa, Gregg P. Macey, Lawrence E. Susskind

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Re/Forming And Influencing Public Policy, Law And Religion: Missing From The Table, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

Taking a leap to be at a table from which Mexican American women have always been absent, and are still not invited, takes tremendous courage, knowing that much personal sacrifice will be required. This Essay addresses why Mexican American women have been absent from the tables of influence in the worlds of public policy, religion, and law, and how they can establish their presence as part of an anti-subordination agenda.

Learning Through Service In A Clinical Setting: The Effect Of Specialization On Social Justice & Skills Training, Antoinette M. Sedillo Lopez

Faculty Scholarship

Arguing against the trend toward specialization in clinical legal education, this essay addresses potential limitations of specialized legal clinics in furthering the dual mission of clinical legal education: social justice and skills training. It points out that specialized clinics limit access to justice by leaving the myriad needs of clients partially unmet. They limit students' learning about the complex needs of clients and students' ability to discover broad inequities in the legal system. Specialization makes it more difficult to train students to be creative problem solvers, and affects their professional socialization

The Secondary Effects Of Environmental Justice Litigation: The Case Of West Dallas Coalition For Environmental Justice V. Epa, Gregg P. Macey, Lawrence E. Susskind

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judicial Review Under Seqra: A Statistical Study, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Nearly 2000 judicial opinions were issued under the State Environmental Quality Review Act ("SEQRA") between its enactment in 1975 and the end of 2000. Almost 700 were issued from 1990 (when the author began undertaking an annual review of SEQRA cases for the New York Law Journal) through 2000. These numbers are large enough to serve as a basis for a statistically valid review of case outcomes.

This article is divided into five parts. Part I presents statistics on the SEQRA cases. Part II reviews the history of how the Court of Appeals has decided SEQRA cases. Part III …

Reflections On Environmental Justice, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Environmental justice is a very hot topic. Yesterday's New York Times on the front page of the Metropolitan section had a story stating: Mid-Sized Plants Headed to Poor Areas. The story stated, "The Pataki administration acknowledges in its own study that the electric generators that it wants to install around New York City would go into poor heavily minority communities, a finding that supports some of the arguments of the project's opponents. This is quoting an unreleased environmental justice analysis that may or may not be valid, but it certainly shows how hot a topic it is. This morning …

Genetic Testing For Susceptability To Disease From Exposure To Toxic Chemicals: Implications For Public And Worker Health Policies, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

The Environmental Genome Program intends to identify "susceptibility genes" that would indicate if a person is more vulnerable to cancer or other disease as a result of exposure to certain chemicals in the workplace, the environment, foods, or other products. Research findings and the capability to test persons for such genes are likely to impugn and challenge health policies and regulatory programs that do not take genetic susceptibility into account when conferring health benefits and restricting chemical exposures. This article focuses on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and discusses four options available to this agency for protecting genetically …

The Destructive Role Of Land Use Planning, Andrew P. Morriss, Roger E. Meiners

Faculty Scholarship

Is land use planning fundamentally different from other forms of central planning? If so, does that difference suggest that land use planning will succeed where other forms of central planning failed? We conclude that land use planning is not fundamentally different from other forms of economic central planning. Further, the working of the market economy, and the long-term success of America's economy, is intertwined in the clear and certain rights and responsibilities generated by the common law of property. The complexity of the modem world does not diminish the need for private property; indeed, it strengthens its imperative. Returning to …

Consultants' And Lawyers' Duties To Report Contamination, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

A recent decision by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) expands the duty of environmental consultants to report contamination on their clients' land. The rationale of the decision might also apply to lawyers and to states beyond New York.

Many federal, state and municipal laws require spills of pollutants to be reported to the government. People have received criminal penalties, including jail time, as well as heavy civil fines, for violating some of these requirements. Almost all of these rules apply only to persons who own, operate, or are otherwise in charge of the polluting facility, or …

Trends In The Supply And Demand For Environmental Lawyers, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

The boom times for environmental lawyers were the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The June 1990 issue of Money magazine called environmental law a "fast-track career." Two or three years of experience with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a state environmental agency, the environmental units of the Justice Department, or a state attorney general's office were a ticket to a high-paying job in the private sector. Law students were clamoring to enter the field and law firms were scrambling to find experienced environmental lawyers, or to recycle newly underemployed antitrust lawyers into this burgeoning field.

Environmental Justice And Natural Areas Protection Trends & Insight, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

There are 3,119,963 square miles in the continental United States. That sounds like plenty of space to put just about anything. However, when the facility seeking a home is environmentally controversial, finding even one square mile can seem almost impossible.

This country is now in its third major era in making siting decisions. The first era – unconstrained siting – lasted until the late 1960s. Then began the second era – protecting natural areas. In the early 1990s, we embarked upon a third era – environmental justice. The growing tensions between protecting natural areas and achieving environmental justice suggest that …

Broadening Our World: Citizens And Immigrants Of Color In America, Victor C. Romero

Faculty Scholarship

This article was originally presented at a symposium. The article discusses affirmative action and ways of increasing diversity in higher education.

The Past, Present And Future Of Title Vi Of The Civil Rights Act As A Tool Of Environmental Justice, Michael B. Gerrard, Nicholas Johnson, Peggy Shepard, Melva J. Hayden, Sheila Foster, Elizabeth Georges

Faculty Scholarship

Mr. Michael Gerrard: I am going to try to do something a little unconventional. After hearing some remarks from Professor Johnson, I will try to start a dialogue. I have been requested to ask very tough questions of our panelists, so I will do that in the hope of drawing all of you in the audience into the dialogue. First, we will hear some remarks from Professor Nicholas Johnson of Fordham University School of Law.

Sustainable Development As A Framework For National Governance, John C. Dernbach

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.