Digital Commons Network^™

An Idea Of American Indian Land Justice: Examining Native Land Liberation In The New Progressive Era, Richael Faithful

Celebrating WCL Student Authors

This article is inspired by Professor Robert Odawi Porter’s remarks during the 2009 D.C. Federal Indian Bar conference in which he outlined a seemingly radical proposal for “land liberation” for American Indian tribes – the abandonment of United States trusteeship over tribal land, and return of title and associated rights to numerous tribes who have lost their land due to nefarious governmental policies and bad deals. In an effort to bridge Porter’s visionary legal viewpoint with renowned economist and philosopher, Amartya Sen’s recent visionary contribution on justice, An Idea of American Indian Land Justice, helps revive an Indian law, critical …

Environmental Documentary Film: A Contemporary Tool For Social Movement, Rachel Gregg

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Building a 21st century movement capable of inspiring social and structural change requires creative education, resourceful collaboration, and civic engagement. The U.S. environmental movement is in need of strategies that bring a wide spectrum of people together, facilitate appropriate interpretation of problems, and prompt innovative, forward-thinking solutions. Environmental documentary film has the ability to dramatize the reality of environmental issues and empower audiences to become an active part of the change necessary to address environmental crises. Utilizing a specific genre of environmental documentary film in novel and inventive ways, people can be gathered, educated, and inspired to become active participants …

The Politics And Culture Of Climate Change: Us Actors And Global Implications, Charles Waugh

English Faculty Publications

Despite the scientific consensus on global warming, many people in the USA,—both ordinary citizens and elected leaders alike—remain skeptical of the need to act, and in fact remain skeptical of the idea that humans are contributing to global warming at all. Thus, environmental justice arguments based on United States carbon emissions and the disproportionate impact of rising temperatures and rising sea levels on tropical developing nations such as Vietnam frequently fall on deaf ears. This chapter explores the political and cultural construction of this deafness, seeking a better understanding of how and why so many Americans refuse to act to …

Lessons From Forty Years Of Interference In Law School Clinics, Robert R. Kuehn, Bridget M. Mccormack

Scholarship@WashULaw

Recently, there have been a number of well-publicized attacks on law school clinics over their legal representation of unpopular individuals and organizations, which brings them in opposition to powerful business and political interests. This article analyzes the effects of forty years of publicized interference in law school clinics on law clinic attorneys and clinical legal education, and the lessons that can be drawn from this extended history. The article includes a typology of outside interference in clinics, provides empirical support for the negative effects of this interference on the attitudes and actions of clinic attorneys, and argues that there are …

Portland Mercado: Community Economic Development To Revitalize, Uplift, And Empower, Abigail Cermak, David Ruelas, Bridger Wineman, Ellen Wyoming

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Realizing public goals of an inclusive and vibrant society requires an advocacy approach to urban planning and economic development. Adelante Planning outlines strategies based on research and case studies to successfully implement a Mercado as an economic development and business incubation strategy for Portland’s Latino community. A Mercado is a strategic planning approach targeted toward Latino populations and other minorities, particularly in gentrifying locations of the Portland Metro region.

This project was conducted under the supervision of Ellen Bassett, Lisa Bates, Karen Gibson, Ken Pirie, and Sumner Sharpe.

Can Preemption Protect Public Participation ?, Adam Babich

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Balancing The "Zoning Budget", Roderick M. Hills Jr., David N. Schleicher

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Climate Torts And Ecocide In The Context Of Proposals For An International Environmental Court, Patrick Foster

Dissertations and Theses

"This thesis is an exploration of two questions that are neither novel nor lacking in exploration: Is an International Environmental Court (IEC) needed? Is such a court feasible? Proposals for an IEC have a rich history, are well founded and numerous. On the issue of necessity, this thesis attempts to pull together historical and current information on two distinct areas of international environmental law and use these analyses to contextualize the need for an international environmental tribunal. Arguments for and against an IEC are presented within a discussion of environmental diplomacy. This thesis begins with a legal discussion of potential …

Cultural Competence In Urban Affairs And Planning, Tom Angotti, Marly Pierre-Louis, Laxmi Ramasubramanian, Sigmund Shipp, Angela Tovar

Publications and Research

In the Fall of 2009, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) undertook the Centro Cultural Competence Initiative (CCI) with the support of a one-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). The goal of the CCI is to address the need for culturally appropriate work in a variety of professions by training students to be culturally competent practitioners. In the Fall of 2010, the Urban Affairs and Planning Department at Hunter College joined CENTRO as a partner in this initiative. Full time Professors Sigmund Shipp, Laxmi Ramasubramanian, and Tom Angotti worked …

From Wood Treatment To Unequal Treatment: The Story Of The St. Regis Superfund Site, Madeline Gallo

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

Teaching Intrapersonal Intelligence As A Lawyering Skill: Introducing Values Systems Into The Environmental Law Syllabus, Michael Burger

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

The ranges and types of problems with traditional law school curricula, pedagogies, and learning cultures are well-rehearsed, and have been framed, narrated, and analyzed in a number of prominent venues, along with suggested improvements and proposals for systemic reform. This Essay addresses one aspect of the ongoing and pervasive critique: the need to develop in law students the diverse intellectual competencies that the practice of law requires. Working within the framework of Professor Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, I argue that intrapersonal intelligence and the self-reflexive analytic process it invokes are important tools in the practicing lawyer’s toolbox, and …

Should "Substitute" Private Attorneys General Enforce Public Environmental Actions? Balancing The Costs And Benefits Of The Contingency Fee Environmental Special Counsel Arrangement, Julie E. Steiner

Faculty Scholarship

There is developing phenomenon of quasi-privatized environmental enforcement occurring on behalf and in the name of governments by entrepreneurial attorneys who substitute in place of the public enforcers and derive professional payment from a contingent fee withdrawn from the public’s environmental damage award. This Article addresses the question of whether governments should permit private attorneys to handle these “substitute environmental special counsel” enforcement arrangements. In so doing, the Article weighs the arrangement’s costs and benefits from the standpoint of whether it maximizes the deterrence and restorative compensation goals of environmental enforcement.

Governments are often the only entities with standing to …

Wait! That's Not What We Meant By Civil Society!: Questioning The Ngo Orthodoxy In West Africa, Thomas Kelley

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Drug Violence And Constitutional Revisions: Mexico's 2008 Criminal Justice Reform And The Formation Of Rule Of Law, William Hine-Ramsberger

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Fracking And Federalism: Support For An Adaptive Approach That Avoids The Tragedy Of The Regulatory Commons, Emily C. Powers

Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Green Infrastructure: The Imperative Of Open Space Preservation, Janice C. Griffith

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

Open space preservation ranks among America's most deeply rooted traditions. The creation of green, civic open spaces was recognized as an important design concept in the formation of a number of the country's early cities. Philadelphia, Savannah, and New Haven were developed around squares of green open space. Most New England towns set aside a town common for grazing cattle and for a myriad of public uses. The first planned suburbs were also organized around protected open spaces.

The environmental movement in the 1970s brought renewed attention to the importance of open space preservation, but the cost of making it …

Protecting Pocahontas's World: The Mattaponi Tribe's Struggle Against Virginia's King William Reservoir Project, Allison M. Dussias

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cultivating Youth Earth Connections Summer Internship Program (Yec): A Hands-On Environmental Justice Focused Farming Program At The High School Level, Samuel Lewis

Pomona Senior Theses

YEC’s main goal was to open dialogue with high school students from under resourced communities about environmental injustices and to create and explore positive alternatives. The summer program, which was funded by the 2010 Davis Projects for Peace and the Pomona College Summer Undergraduate Research Project Award, included a group of 11 high school students from Pomona, Montclair, La Puente, and Chino Hills, CA. The students were paid to participate in the program for 6 weeks in the summer of 2010, five days a week, for 30 hours each week. The program was designed to consistently connect movements for food …

An Environmental Justice Critique Of Comparative Advantage: Indigenous Peoples, Trade Policy, And The Mexican Neoliberal Economic Reforms, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Faculty Articles

The free market reforms adopted by Mexico in the wake of the debt crisis of the 1980s and in connection with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have jeopardized the physical and cultural survival of Mexico’s indigenous peoples, increased migration to the United States, threatened biological diversity in Mexico, and imposed additional stress on the environment in the United States. Despite these negative impacts, NAFTA continues to serve as a template for trade agreements in the Americas. Unless this template is fundamentally restructured, future trade agreements may replicate throughout the Western hemisphere many of the economic, ecological and social …

Climate Change, Food Security, And Agrobiodiversity: Toward A Just, Resilient, And Sustainable Food System, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Faculty Articles

The global food system is in a state of profound crisis. Decades of misguided aid, trade and production policies have resulted in an unprecedented erosion of agrobiodiversity that renders the world’s food supply vulnerable to catastrophic crop failure in the event of drought, heavy rains, and outbreaks of pests and disease. Climate change threatens to wreak additional havoc on food production by increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, depressing agricultural yields, reducing the productivity of the world’s fisheries, and placing pressure on scarce water resources. Furthermore, the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis are occurring at a …

The Global Politics Of Food: Introduction To The Theoretical Perspectives Cluster, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Faculty Articles

In May 2010, the Universidad Interamericana in Mexico City hosted an international conference on The Global Politics of Food: Sustainability and Subordination. Sponsored by Latina and Latino Critical Legal Theory, Inc. and by Seattle University School of Law, the conference took place under the auspices of the South-North Exchange on Theory, Culture and Law (SNX), a yearly gathering of scholars in the Americas that seeks to foster transnational, cross-disciplinary and inter-cultural dialogue on current issues in law, theory and culture. Published in the University of Miami Inter-American Law Review, the conference papers examine the complex ways in which the …

Climate Change And The Puget Sound: Building The Legal Framework For Adaptation, Robert L. Glicksman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The scope of climate change impacts is expected to be extraordinary, touching every ecosystem on the planet and affecting human interactions with the natural and built environment. From increased surface and water temperatures to sea level rise and more frequent extreme weather events, climate change promises vast and profound alterations to our world. Indeed, scientists predict continued climate change impacts regardless of any present or future mitigation efforts due to the long-lived nature of greenhouse gases emitted over the last century. The need to adapt to this new future is crucial. Adaptation may take a variety of forms, from implementing …

Estimation Of Exposure To Toxic Releases Using Spatial Interaction Modeling, Jamison F. Conley

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Background

The United States Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data are frequently used to estimate a community's exposure to pollution. However, this estimation process often uses underdeveloped geographic theory. Spatial interaction modeling provides a more realistic approach to this estimation process. This paper uses four sets of data: lung cancer age-adjusted mortality rates from the years 1990 through 2006 inclusive from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database, TRI releases of carcinogens from 1987 to 1996, covariates associated with lung cancer, and the EPA's Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) model.

Results

The impact of the …

Wait! That's Not What We Meant By Civil Society!: Questioning The Ngo Orthodoxy In West Africa, Thomas A. Kelley Iii

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

State Of Metropolitan Housing Report: 2011: Environmental Concerns, Lauren Heberle

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Capturing Individual Harms, Katrina Fischer Kuh

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

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 (‘CHG’) emissions as an exemplar, the Article illustrates how local information, local governments, and local implementation can enhance policies designed …

Transforming Students, Transforming Self: The Power Of Teaching Social Justice Struggles In Context, Raquel Aldana

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Teaching In A Transformative Era: Selected Essays From The Society Of American Law Teachers Teaching Conference , Raquel Aldana, Hazel Weiser

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

The Environmental Laws Of The 1970s: They Looked Good On Paper, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

Articles

This article looks at the "top ten" environmental laws enacted in the 1970s, including the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. It asks: What were the pin-up qualities that made these laws look good on paper? What were the features sponsors bragged about or critics deplored? How were they understood and described at the time of legislative birth? What was thought to be new, different, and better?

We know some of these things about all of these laws. I’ll exercise editorial judgment and declare four common features …

Development's Victim Or Its Beneficiary?: The Impact Of Oil And Gas Development On The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, Raymond Cross

North Dakota Law Review

No abstract provided.