Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

Integrating Public Health Into Planning: Promising Practices For Regional Planning Councils, Zoe Miller

Muskie School Capstones and Dissertations

This Capstone project was designed to provide technical expertise to Greater Portland Council of Governments (GPCOG) for their 2017 strategic planning process. GPCOG is the Regional Planning Council (RPC) for Cumberland County, Maine. Also known as Councils of Government (COGs) and simply Regional Councils – these municipal and regional planning organizations were established in the U.S. in the 1960s. They are multi-service entities with state-defined boundaries that deliver a variety of federal, state, and local program supports. They provide planning and technical assistance to their member municipal governments. RPCs are accountable to their members and are partners with the state …

Rituals Reproducing Race: African American Women's Feminine Hygiene Practices, Shared Experiences, And Power, Angela K. Guy-Lee

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation is an exploration of the role African American women’s feminine hygiene practices, namely vaginal douching, plays in the creation and reproduction of race. Compared to their white and Latina counterparts, African American women are the most likely to engage in this practice. Vaginal douching is associated with myriad reproductive and sexual health problems. These problems include but are not limited to recurrent yeast infections, bacterial vaginosis, disrupting healthy vaginal microbiomes, and spontaneous preterm birth; of which African American women experience disproportionately. Although racial differences in vaginal douching are well documented, little is known about the impetus for African …

Race, Retreat, And Refuge: Black Voices, American Nature Writing, And Ecocritical Exile, Bryon Patrick Williams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While existing scholarship has begun to recognize the extensive environmental experience of African Americans during the nineteenth century, black-authored environmental writing from the era is conspicuously scant in studies and anthologies into the present, even in volumes devoted to ecocritically-inflected texts by authors of color. My dissertation argues that contemporary, racially-aligned divides and gaps in environmental discourse have roots in the 1840s and 50s, when the nature writing genre coalesced into its most enduring form in the works of Henry David Thoreau, literary artist turned cultural icon. This key era—during which black Americans were frequently subject to systematic deprivation of …

What We Produce, Jeff Kasper, Alix Camacho, Pablo Helguera, Social Practice Queens

What We Produce

Writings from work with Social Practice Queens in 2015-2019, including an Interview with Pablo Helguera and a dialog with Chloe Bass. Social Practice Queens (SPQ) is a unique pedagogical experiment and educational platform that supports the integration of studio art with interdisciplinary research, community collaboration, environmental justice and critical urbanism. Founded in 2010, SPQ links together the resources of an academic institution, Queens College and the City University of New York (CUNY), and the long-standing community-based activism of the Queens Museum and other partnering institutions. SPQ’s goal is to initiate real-world change through practices of care, social intervention and aesthetic …

The Potential And Limits Of Extended Producer Responsibility: A Comparative Analysis Study, Jessica Bass

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis draws on the concept of product stewardship and its focus on incorporating all of the actors in a product’s lifecycle into steps to take responsibility for waste management. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) recognizes the producer’s distinct potential to consider and drive change in waste management. Producers often serve like mediators between the design and use phases of a product’s lifecycle. Through EPR policies, the producer takes on the costs of ensuring safe end-of-life waste disposal. In this way, EPR can be expected to help relieve the public of some of the costs of waste disposal, and to support …

A Foe More Than A Friend: Law And The Health Of The American Urban Poor, David Ray Papke, Mary Elise Papke

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Community Engagement And Transportation Equity, Edward W. De Barbieri

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Escaping The Abdication Trap When Cooperative Federalism Fails: Legal Reform After Flint, David A. Dana

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

“Sacrifice Zones” In The Green Energy Economy: Toward An Environmental Justice Framework, Dayna Scott, Adrian A. Smith

Articles & Book Chapters

The environmental justice movement validates the grassroots struggles of residents of places which Steve Lerner refers to as “sacrifice zones”: low-income and racialized communities shouldering more than their fair share of environmental harms related to pollution, contamination, toxic waste, and heavy industry. On this account, disparities in wealth and power, often inscribed and re-inscribed through social processes of racialization, are understood to produce disparities in environmental burdens. Here, we attempt to understand how these dynamics are shifting in the green energy economy under settler colonial capitalism. We consider the possibility that the political economy of green energy contains its own …

The Abstract Subject Of The Climate Migrant: Displaced By The Rising Tides Of The Green Energy Economy, Dayna Scott, Adrian A. Smith

Articles & Book Chapters

A controversial proposal to build the mammoth ‘Site C’ dam on the Peace River in northwestern Canada offers an opportunity to explore the intersections of climate and migration issues under debate in international environmental governance circles. Site C threatens to flood traditional fishing spots and traplines of Indigenous peoples in the name of the ‘green energy’ economy. We consider how people displaced by renewable energy projects justified as climate mitigation policies might constitute a different kind of ‘climate refugee’ in that they are ‘displaced without moving’ – the connections between the land and the people are severed to the extent …

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 …

Before Me, After Me, Through Me: Stories Of Food And Community In Eastern Kentucky, Abigail Myers Huggins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This text contextualizes and presents twenty-three oral history interviews conducted in eastern Kentucky during the summer of 2016 as a part of a Master of Arts thesis in southern studies. The interviews were conducted with people specifically connected to food, farming, and community activism in and near Letcher County, Kentucky. The interviews explore such topics as: past and present food traditions, seed saving, gardening, farming, food preservation, herbalism, local food systems, food access, youth, theater arts, lgbtq+ advocacy, and appalachian identity. This document complements an online collection of oral history excerpts created as an audio documentary portion of the overall …

The Crucible Of Orthodoxy And Orthopraxy: Examining The Intersections Of Social Justice, Moral Development And Theology, Eydie Dyke Shypulski

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to better understand the relationship between moral development, theology and social justice within a Christian context. An apparent disconnect exists regarding how people of faith apply personal morals and theological perspectives when positioning themselves with regard to public policy and social justice issues. The researcher sought to extract information that would have implications for professional social practice, social work ethical and practice pedagogy, for faith-based institutions of higher learning and for the broader Christian community. A theological reflection included a brief examination of Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophies of moral and ethical development followed by …

Kagan's Atlantic Crossing: Adversarial Legalism, Eurolegalism, And Cooperative Legalism, Francesca Bignami, R. Daniel Kelemen

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this contribution to Varieties of Legal Order, a book inspired by Robert Kagan’s scholarship, we review the debate on the spread of American “adversarial legalism” to Europe. In the 1990s, Kagan developed the concept of adversarial legalism to capture the distinctive litigiousness of the American regulatory system, and asked whether it might take hold in Europe. In our research that followed, we put forward different answers. R. Daniel Kelemen concluded that a legal style akin to adversarial legalism--one which he eventually termed Eurolegalism—was in fact spreading across the European Union. Drawing on her case study of the data …

Environmental Impacts Of The Border Wall, Sarah Krakoff, Dan Millis, Andy Gordon, Sarah Burt

Publications

On January 25, 2017, during his first week in office, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order calling for the “immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border” of the United States. Such a wall would span more than one thousand miles, across many different habitats and many different communities. Before a wall will be built, numerous questions must be answered: Which environmental laws apply? How might all this work? On February 16, ELI convened experts to discuss how environmental law and policy may interact with the Executive Order, and to spark discussion about important environmental resources and …

Establishing Applicable Water Quality Standards For Surface Waters On Indian Reservations, Jin Hyung Lee

Emory Law Journal

The Clean Water Act is the foundational water law in the United States. It seeks to protect the nation¿s waters through establishing programs that limit pollutant discharge into surface waters. Although all states have water quality standards for surface waters that run through their respective boundaries, most tribes lack water quality standards that are applicable for establishing effluent limitations under the Clean Water Act. This Comment proposes a solution to this regulatory gap in the Clean Water Act. It suggests the Environmental Protection Agency ought to promulgate a new rule making tribal water quality standards applicable for Clean Water Act …

Stand Clear Of The Closing Doors, Please: Transit Equity, Social Exclusion, And The New York City Subway, Taylor Novick-Finder

Pitzer Senior Theses

The history of transportation planning in New York City has created disparities between those who have sufficient access to the public transportation network, and those who face structural barriers to traveling from their home to education, employment, and healthcare opportunities. This thesis analyzes the legacy of discriminatory policy surrounding the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and city and state governments that have failed to support vital infrastructure improvement projects and service changes to provide multi-modal welfare to New York’s working poor. By exploring issues of transit equity as they pertain to the New York City subway system, this thesis raises the …

Greening Us Legacy Cities: Urban Agriculture As A Strategy For Reclaiming Vacant Land, Fanny Carlet, Joseph Schilling, Megan Heckert

Geography & Planning Faculty Publications

Repurposing vacant land for food production is expanding as a response to urban blight, food insecurity and food deserts. As municipalities integrate urban agriculture in their sustainability plans and zoning regulations, scholars are beginning to take a broader look at the benefits from this and other types of greening strategies. This article investigates current state of research and practice of urban agriculture as an emerging strategy for regenerating shrinking cities. It highlights key findings while offering observations on how public officials and practitioners can leverage this research to enhance urban agriculture as a treatment for vacant land.

Open Educational Resource 2017 Textbook List, Zachariah Claybaugh, Chelsea Stone

Librarian Publications

This is an updated, discipline specific OER textbook list for departments at Sacred Heart University, compiled by Zach Claybaugh and Chelsea Stone.

Alienation And Reconciliation In Social-Ecological Systems, Ann M. Eisenberg

Faculty Publications

After rancher Ammon Bundy’s forceful occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to protest federal “tyranny” in 2016, mainstream commentary dismissed Bundy and his supporters as crackpots. But the dismissal of the occupation as errant overlooked this event’s significance. This conflict: 1) involved a clash over scarce natural resources, of the type that will likely gain more frequency and intensity in the face of climate change; and 2) highlighted the popular idea that the federal government and federal environmental regulations are the enemy of the (white, rural, male) worker. This thread of antienvironmental, anti-federal alienation among many working people has …

Eiu 4123g : Social Movements, Crowds, And Violence, Communication Studies

Approved Course Proposals

No abstract provided.

Pls 4763 : Environmental Politics & Policy, Political Science

Approved Course Proposals

No abstract provided.

Climate Legislation And Litigation In Brazil, Gabriel Wedy

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Brazil plays a major role in the global fight against climate change, especially because of its vast forests. However, the amount of deforestation now occurring is in great dispute. Between August 2014 and July 2015, for example, deforestation in the Amazon rainforest increased by 215% according to Imazon Research Institute. Contrarily, according to the Brazil Government, the increase was only 16%.

This paper discusses the role that legislation and litigation are playing, and the roles they may and should play in the future, in combatting deforestation and other factors relevant to climate change in Brazil.

Putting Green Infrastructure On Private Property In New York City, Justin Gundlach

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

New York City, like other cities that built combined sewer systems in the early twentieth century, is embarking on the reconfiguration of its approach to stormwater management – one that shifts away from exclusive reliance on “grey infrastructure” (asphalt, pipes, tunnels, sea walls) to greater reliance on “green infrastructure” (green roofs, bioswales, rain gardens, permeable pavements, coastal wetlands). That reconfiguration will entail physical changes as well as changes to the regulation and financing of stormwater management. And, underlying these physical, regulatory, and financial changes is New Yorkers’ role in managing and paying for stormwater runoff – that too must change …

Clean Electrification, Shelley Welton

University of Colorado Law Review

To combat climate change, many leading states have adopted the aim of creating a "participatory"g rid. In this new model, electricity is priced based on time of consumption and carbon content, and consumers are encouraged to adjust their behavior and adopt new technologies to maintain affordable electricity. Although a more participatory grid is an important component of lowering greenhouse gas emissions, it also raises a new problem of clean energy justice: utilities and consumer advocates claim that such policies unjustly benefit the rich at the expense of the poor, given the type of consumer best able to participate in the …

Pride And Prejudice And Administrative Zombies: How Economic Woes, Outdated Environmental Regulations, And State Exceptionalism Failed Flint, Michigan, Brie D. Sherwin

University of Colorado Law Review

It was just over forty years ago, shortly before the Safe Drinking Water Act was passed, that a group of mothers in the small, sleepy town of Woburn, Massachusetts realized there just may have been a connection between their children's leukemia and the town's water supply. They withstood the terrible smell and masked the water's rancid flavor with orange juice. For months they inquired, complained, and assembled in hopes that someone in a position of authority would notice what was so obvious to them. And for months they were dismissed and even ridiculed. Turns out they were right. It took …

Environmental Racism, American Exceptionalism, And Cold War Human Rights, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Faculty Articles

Environmental justice scholars and activists coined the terms “environmental racism” to describe the disproportionate concentration of environmental hazards in neighborhoods populated by racial and ethnic minorities. Having exhausted domestic legal remedies (or having concluded that these remedies are unavailable), communities of color in the United States are increasingly turning to international human rights law and institutions to challenge environmental racism.

However, the United States has ratified only a handful of human rights treaties, and has limited the domestic application of these treaties through reservations and declarations that preclude judicial enforcement in the absence of implementing legislation. Indeed, the U.S. has …

Show, Don't Tell: How Thailand Can And Must Make Advancements In The Fight Against Human Trafficking In The Thai Fishing Industry, Shelby Stephens

Emory International Law Review

Despite the new legislation adopted by the Thai legislature, labor trafficking in the Thai fishing industry is still an issue of international concern. In order for progress to be made in combatting the practice of labor trafficking, Thailand must begin to adequately enforce existing anti-trafficking legislation, as well as implement further anti-trafficking measures. Additionally, new maritime labor laws and laws governing Thai waters are necessary for regulation of the illicit activity ongoing in the Thai fishing industry. If Thailand does not take significant steps to eradicate trafficking, it could face sanctions from authorities like the United States State Department and …

The Ends And Means Of Pollution Control: Toward A Positive Theory Of Environmental Law, David M. Driesen

Utah Law Review

An understanding of environmental law’s means and ends makes it possible to understand the field as a whole, both in terms of the overall structure of statutes and relationships between means and ends. This analysis of means and ends yields a host of valuable insights and significant research questions. It also provides an important foundation for evaluating proposed regulatory reforms. A reasonably complete theory, at a minimum, should also explain key features of the enforcement regime and the allocation of authority among governments. The theory of means and ends articulated here constitutes a very substantial step forward in constructing a …