Law Commons^™

Tear It All Down: Highways As Racist Monuments, Sarah Schindler

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

In recent months, citizens and elected officials around the country have been tearing down or ordering the removal of monuments that symbolize white supremacy and subjugation. While many of the targeted monuments are statues of people who supported or espoused racist ideologies, another set of more innocuous monuments to racial segregation still stand: America’s Highways.

Amici Curiae Brief Of The International Municipal Lawyers Association And Legal Scholars In Support Of Defendants-Appellees In Portland Pipe Line Corporation, Et Al. V. City Of South Portland, Et Al., Sarah J. Fox, Sara C. Bronin, Nestor M. Davidson, Keith H. Hirokawa, Ashira Pelman Ostrow, Dave Owen, Laurie Reynolds, Jonathan D. Rosenbloom, Sarah Schindler

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This brief to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court was filed in support of the City of South Portland by the Amici Curiae, including the International Municipal Lawyers Association and legal scholars, to provide the Court with a background on the role of local governments in land use planning, and to explain why the City of South Portland’s Clear Skies Ordinance falls easily within the City’s authority and was not preempted by state legislation.

After studying the potential for bulk loading of crude oil within its boundaries, the City of South Portland concluded that the infrastructure requirements and environmental impacts of …

No Common Ground: Competing Worldviews At Mato Tipila, Wendy Anne Felese

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project analyzes a legal conflict (Bear Lodge Multiple Use Assn v Babbitt 2 F. Supp. 2d 1448) at Mato Tipila, a significant place for the Lakota (Sioux) community and with which they have a historical and longstanding relationship. Commercial and recreational rock-climbing enthusiasts who make use of it and the tourists who arrive in droves each year to visit, call this place Devils Tower. The case centered on whether the government violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by instituting a climbing ban during the month of June to accommodate Lakota ceremonial obligations. In recent historical developments, the …

The "Publicization" Of Private Space, Sarah Schindler

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Recently, many urban areas have moved away from the creation of publicly owned open spaces and toward privately owned public open spaces, or “POPOS.” These POPOS take many forms: concrete plazas that separate a building from the sidewalk; glass-windowed atriums in downtown office buildings; rooftop terraces and gardens; and grass-covered spaces that appear to be traditional parks. This Article considers the nature of POPOS and examines whether they live up to expectations about the role that public space should play and the value it should provide to communities. This analysis is especially important because in embracing POPOS, cities have made …

Food Federalism: States, Local Governments, And The Fight For Food Sovereignty, Sarah Schindler

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Recently, a number of states have sought to withdraw or restrain local power. In this Article, which is part of the “Re-Thinking State Relevance” symposium hosted by the Ohio State Law Journal, I write about a state taking the opposite approach, and attempting to affirmatively endow its local governments with additional powers. The state is Maine, and the context is control over local food production and sales. This Article begins by addressing the emergence of the sustainable local foods movement broadly, and reasons for the growth of this movement. It then focuses more pointedly on the food sovereignty movement, considering …

Regulating The Underground: Secret Supper Clubs, Pop-Up Restaurants, And The Role Of Law, Sarah Schindler

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Instagram pictures of elegantly plated dinners, long farm-style tables, and well-to-do people laughing in what looks like a loft apartment are followed by commenters asking, “Where is this?” This is the world of underground dining. Aspiring and established chefs invite strangers into their homes (or their friends’ stores after hours, or the empty warehouse at the edge of town, or the nearest farm) for a night of food and revelry in exchange for cash. Although decidedly anti-establishment, these secret suppers and pop-up restaurants are popular — there are websites to help people locate them, and many respected publications have penned …

Architectural Exclusion: Discrimination And Segregation Through Physical Design Of The Built Environment, Sarah Schindler

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The built environment is characterized by man-made physical features that make it difficult for certain individuals—often poor people and people of color—to access certain places. Bridges were designed to be so low that buses could not pass under them in order to prevent people of color from accessing a public beach. Walls, fences, and highways separate historically white neighborhoods from historically black ones. Wealthy communities have declined to be served by public transit so as to make it difficult for individuals from poorer areas to access their neighborhoods.

Although the law has addressed the exclusionary impacts of racially restrictive covenants …

Unpermitted Urban Agriculture: Transgressive Actions, Changing Norms, And The Local Food Movement, Sarah Schindler

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Roberta keeps four chickens in her backyard. Bob snuck onto the vacant lot next door, which the bank foreclosed upon and now owns, and planted a vegetable garden. Vien operates an occasional underground restaurant from his friends' microbrewery after beer-making operations cease for the day. The common thread tying these actions together is that they are unauthorized; they are being undertaken in violation of existing laws and often norms. In this Article, I explore ideas surrounding the overlap between food policy and land use law, specifically the transgressive actions that people living in urban and suburban communities are undertaking to …

Banning Lawns, Sarah Schindler

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Recognizing their role in sustainability efforts, many local governments are enacting climate change plans, mandatory green building ordinances, and sustainable procurement policies. But thus far, local governments have largely ignored one of the most pervasive threats to sustainability — lawns. This Article examines the trend toward sustainability mandates by considering the implications of a ban on lawns, the single largest irrigated crop in the United States. Green yards are deeply seated in the American ethos of the sanctity of the single-family home. However, this psychological attachment to lawns results in significant environmental harms: conventional turfgrass is a non-native monocrop that …

Race And Income Disparity: An Ideology-Neutral Approach To Reconciling Capitalism And Economic Justice, Robert M. Hardaway

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Income and wealth disparities along racial lines in the United States constitute a continuing threat to the political and democratic stability upon which the economy and government of the United States fundamentaly depends. The quest or solutions to these economic dijpariies has thus far been frustrated by ideological battles between poliical groups and coalitions. In particular, ideological preconceptions have prevented these groups from listening to the ideas and proposals of opposing groups and working together to find real solutions to the problem of income disparities that actually work. Instead, they have created policies which, while fitting within a preconceived ideological …

The Future Of Abandoned Big Box Stores: Legal Solutions To The Legacies Of Poor Planning Decisions, Sarah Schindler

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Big box stores, the defining retail shopping location for the majority of American suburbs, are being abandoned at alarming rates, due in part to the economic downturn. These empty stores impose numerous negative externalities on the communities in which they are located, including blight, reduced property values, loss of tax revenue, environmental problems, and a decrease in social capital. While scholars have generated and critiqued prospective solutions to prevent abandonment of big box stores, this Article asserts that local zoning ordinances can alleviate the harms imposed by the thousands of existing, vacant big boxes. Because local governments control land use …

Of Backyard Chickens And Front Yard Gardens: The Conflict Between Local Governments And Locavores, Sarah Schindler

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Locavores aim to source their food locally. Many locavores are also concerned more broadly with living sustainably and decreasing reliance on industrial agriculture. As more people have joined the locavore movement, including many who reside in urban and suburban areas, conflict has emerged between the locavores’ desires to use their private property to produce food — for personal use and for sale — and municipal zoning ordinances that seek to separate agriculture from residential uses. In this article, I consider the evolution of this conflict and its implications for our systems of land use, local government, and environmental law. Specifically, …

Following Industry's Leed: Municipal Adoption Of Private Green Building Standards, Sarah Schindler

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Local governments are beginning to require new, privately constructed and funded buildings to be “green” buildings. Instead of creating their own, locally-derived definitions of green buildings, many municipalities are adopting an existing private standard created by members of the building industry: LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). This Article explains and assesses the privately promulgated LEED standards. It argues that the translation of LEED standards, which were intended to be voluntary, into law raises several theoretical and practical problems. Specifically, private green building ordinances that rely on LEED do not ensure a reduction in the negative local environmental impacts …