Law Commons^™

Outcome Report Of Roundtable On Governing Natural Resources, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In November 2014, CCSI convened a one-day roundtable focused on lessons learned from good governance initiatives for extractive industry investments and large land-based agricultural investments. The roundtable brought together a range of stakeholders working on extractive industry investments and/or land-based forestry and agricultural investments, including representatives from civil society, government, academia, and the private sector. CCSI has published an outcome note from this roundtable.

Key structural differences between the extractive industries and the forestry and agriculture sectors mean that not all lessons learned from good governance initiatives related to extractives investments or land-based agricultural investments are transferrable. However, large-scale extractive …

The Promises And Pitfalls Of Micro-Housing, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

This is a primer on the new and growing phenomenon of micro-housing. It defines micro-housing, discusses policy arguments and outlines regulatory issues.

What Every Land Use Lawyer Should Know About The Emerging Use Of Health Impact Assessment And Land Use Decision Making, Patricia E. Salkin, Pamela Ko

Patricia E. Salkin

The field of Health Impact Assessment is relatively new to the United States, but already a number of state and local governments are incorporating these assessments into land use planning and decision making. In five years, the use of HIA in the U.S. has increased dramatically with more than 100 HIAs completed or in progress in the U.S. from 2007 to 2010. This article provides a brief overview of HIA in the United States, describes how it is being used in other states with respect to land use decision making, and examines how HIA is starting to be incorporated into …

Sustainability As A Means Of Improving Environmental Justice, Patricia E. Salkin, John C. Dernbach, Donald A. Brown

Patricia E. Salkin

This article explains why environmental justice provides much of the foundation for sustainable development, and shows how sustainability can improve our ability to achieve environmental justice. The article first explains a basic but often unrecognized truth about environmental policy: environmental pollution and degradation, sooner or later, harms humans. Both sustainable development and environmental justice respond to this problem, though in somewhat different ways. Sustainable development, however, suggests a broader set of tools to address this problem than are often employed for environmental justice. The article shows how four broad approaches — more and better sustainability options, law for sustainability, visionary …

It's A 'Criming Shame': Moving From Land Use Ethics To Criminalization Of Behavior Leading To Permits And Other Zoning Related Acts, Patricia E. Salkin, Bailey Ince

Patricia E. Salkin

In the past, land use ethics inquiries predominately involved conflicts of interest or an official holding public office while engaging in a previously held business or law practice. Now, prosecutors are looking at the underlying criminality of the unethical acts carried out in the context of land use decisions. With a wide array of criminal statutes in the hands of federal prosecutors, almost all forms of unethical conduct could in some way also violate a federal criminal statute.Part II of this article reviews the federal statutes most often used by federal prosecutors and provides some examples of recent reported cases …

Florida's Downtowns: The Key To Smart Growth, Urban Revitalization, And Green Space Preservation, John T. Marshall

John Travis Marshall

This article reviews Florida's growth management system, which has spurred suburban development, and its negative impact on Florida's cities. As Florida's governor and legislature have turned their focus to this issue, this article evaluates policy recommendations to limit Florida's suburban sprawl and invigorate its urban centers.

Legislation To Preserve And Control Open Space Land, William Gregory, Diane Vanwyck

William A. Gregory

No abstract provided.

Features Of Forestry In Bangladesh And Available Legal Protections And Implications, Mahmudul Hasan

Mahmudul Hasan

Due to climate change as well as rise of global temperature Bangladesh is going to face a massive environmental challenge. Being an environmentally vulnerable country Bangladesh needs to step immediately to take all sort of measures to prevent the growing environmental threats. Forestry plays a pivotal role to protect environment as well as biodiversity of a particular region. Being agriculture based country and a coastal region Bangladesh already has been facing the adverse effect of decrease of forest lands. For some decades desertification has been taking place in many arena of the country. And due to the large amount of …

How Are Local Governments Responding To Student Rental Problems In University Towns In The United States, Canada, And England?, Jack S. Frierson

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Profile - The Jacques Marchais Museum Of Tibetan Art, James Hagy, Kelly Cooper

Rooftops Project

Picture yourself leading a museum tucked into a 21st-century residential neighborhood, housed in a mid-20th-century building, mimicking a 16th-century Tibetan monastery, containing priceless art objects crossing a millennium. The Rooftops Project’s Kelly Cooper and Professor James Hagy visit the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art on Staten Island, New York.

Profile - The Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation, Evanston, Illinois, James Hagy, Carlee Cooper

Rooftops Project

A religious congregation envisions a new building better suited to its needs than its existing facility. But the location is perfect at its present suburban property. How might it start over while also observing green design principles? Rooftops Project team member Carlee Cooper and Professor James Hagy tour the new home of the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Illinois, with Michael Ross of Ross Barney Architects. It is the first place of worship in the United States to receive a LEED Platinum designation.

Democratic Deliberation In The Wild: The Mcgill Online Design Studio And The Regulationroom Project, Cynthia R. Farina, Hoi Kong, Cheryl Blake, Mary J. Newhart, Nik Luka

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Although there is no single unified conception of deliberative democracy, the generally accepted core thesis is that democratic legitimacy comes from authentic deliberation on the part of those affected by a collective decision. This deliberation must occur under conditions of equality, broadmindedness, reasonableness, and inclusion. In exercises such as National Issue forums, citizen juries, and consensus conferences, deliberative practitioners have shown that careful attention to process design can enable ordinary citizens to engage in meaningful deliberation about difficult public policy issues. Typically, however, these are closed exercises-that is, they involve a limited number of participants, often selected to achieve a …

Billionaires, Birds, And Environmental Brawls: Reconceptualizing Energy Easements, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Dwelling Together: Using Cooperative Housing To Abate The Affordable Housing Shortage In Canada And The United States, Jennifer Cohoon Mcscotts

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Kyoto Comes To Georgia: How International Environmental Initiatives Foster Sustainable Commerce In Small Town America, T. Rick Irvin, Peter A. Appel, Julie M. Mcentire, J. Chris Rabon

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Community Involvement In Brownfield Redevelopment Makes Cents: A Study Of Brownfield Redevelopment Initiatives In The United States And Central And Eastern Europe, Anne Marie Pippin

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Highest Court In New York Affirms Local Power To Regulate Hydrofracking, John R. Nolon, Jessica A. Bacher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In one of the most anxiously awaited New York land use decisions in recent memory, the State’s highest court held that local governments have the power to regulate hydrofracking under their authority to enact zoning ordinances. Both the Towns of Dryden and Middlefield enacted zoning laws that entirely banned gas drilling and associated activities within their borders. The plaintiffs, a private gas company in one case and a private property owner in the other, claimed that a supersession clause in the State Oil, Gas, and Solution Mining Law (OGSML) preempted local authority. After reviewing the plain language of the OGSML, …

Incorporating Third Party Green Building Rating Systems Into Municipal Building And Zoning Codes, Edward Teyber

Pace Environmental Law Review

The role of green buildings in mitigating climate change has thus become a hot topic. This literature has begun to elicit change within corporations pursuing third party certification of their corporate buildings and campuses. Perhaps the success of discrete green building projects in mitigating climate change compared to the failure of international regulatory bodies to reach consensus for meaningful change is due to the publicity and, in turn, profits associated with certification by a third party green building rating system. In addition to reduced GHG emissions, reduced runoff, reduced maintenance costs, and positive publicity of green buildings for the project …

Encouraging Cooperation: Harmonizing The Battle Of Association And Mortgagee Lien Priority In America’S Common Interest Communities, Christian J. Bromley

Christian J Bromley

As the United States grappled with millions of foreclosures in recent years, the delinquency of mortgage and community association payments threatened the sustainability of over 300,000 common interest communities that house 63.4 million Americans. When owners of residential property fall behind on mortgage and association assessments, a battle for lien priority emerges between the associations and mortgagees. Each respectively holds a lien on the property to secure the debt owed to them, but it is the priority of these liens that determines the amount the lienholder recovers from a foreclosure sale. There is no uniform approach to priority in the …

Snapshots From New Orleans' Long-Term Recovery-- Katrina At 9, John T. Marshall

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Property Constructs And Nature's Challenge To Perpetuity, Jessica Owley

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 4 in Environmental Law and Contrasting Ideas of Nature: a Constructivist Approach, Keith H. Hirokawa, ed.

Order And Disorder In The Urban Forest: A Foucauldian-Latourian Perspective, Irus Braverman

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 9 in Urban Forests, Trees, and Greenspace: A Political Ecology Perspective, L. Anders Sandberg, Adrina Bardekjian & Sadia Butt, eds.

We pass by street trees everyday. Their existence as well as their particular location in the city seems obvious, innocuous, natural. But, as is the case with most taken-for-granted "things" (Brown, 2011), some excavation is bound to reveal a more complicated and even ideological story. This study focuses on such a story: the story of the clandestine governance of nature and of humans by way of nature - all through the construction and regulation of city street …

"You Must Remember This:" Nothing Lasts A Hundred Years, David D. Butler

David D. Butler

Much of what any given generation thinks of as "natural," is, in fact, the result of a prevoious generation's civil engineering projects. Medieval French peasants used to say that mythical giants built the Roman acquiducts of Southern France, because the notion that mere humans could have constructed such systems was simply beyond their post Black-Death conception.

Article 27 And Mexican Land Reform: The Legacy Of Zapata's Dream, James J. Kelly

James J. Kelly Jr.

This student note takes an historical look at indigenous land tenure in Mexico and the role that limited alienability has played in sustaining indigenous agriculture from the time of the Aztecs up until the reforms enacted by the Salinas administration in Mexico in the early 1990's. As the piece was in edits, the Zapatista rebellion broke out and the text was amended to note the role that land tenure played in the uprising.

"We Shall Not Be Moved": Urban Communities, Eminent Domain And The Socioeconomics Of Just Compensation, James J. Kelly Jr.

James J. Kelly Jr.

No abstract provided.

Inclusionary Housing On A Global Basis, James Kelly

James J. Kelly Jr.

This is a book review of Inclusionary Housing in International Perspective: Affordable Housing, Social Inclusion, and Land Value Recapture (2010, Nico Calavita and Alan Mallach, eds.). The book offers a comparative look at land-use based approaches to the creation of affordable housing in a broad range of developed countries. A little less than a sixth of the book is dedicated to the U.S., with special attention given to the development on inclusionary programs in California and New Jersey. The editors then devote a chapter each to Canada, England, Ireland, France, Spain and Italy. The penultimate chapter looks at inclusionary practices …

Homes Affordable For Good: Covenants And Ground Leases As Long-Term Resale-Restriction Devices, James J. Kelly

James J. Kelly Jr.

Covenants and ground leases have been, and continue to be, used to create shared spaces that are fundamentally, and often invidiously, exclusive. Famously made a dead letter in the case of Shelley v. Kraemer, covenants banning resale to nonwhite households put the force of law behind the segregated birth of America’s suburbs. Today, gated residential communities and shopping malls assure a degree of class exclusivity through covenants and commercial ground leases, respectively. These same legal mechanisms, however, are now deployed to assure long-term inclusion as well. Developers of affordable housing are creating homes that are not only beneficial to the …

Land Trusts That Conserve Communities, James J. Kelly

James J. Kelly Jr.

Much has been written about land trusts that conserve wilderness, agriculture or other environmentally beneficial uses that would be threatened by unfettered development. In the context of inner-cities, Community Land Trusts (CLTs) conserve neighborhoods. Like their environmental and agricultural counterparts, CLTs employ use restrictions to prioritize communally beneficial development. Conserving communities, however, requires other legal tools as well. CLTs create and sustain permanently affordable homes to break the market’s bias toward socioeconomic homogeneity. CLTs also make room, literally, for green space, sites of shared culture and other productive activities that the market tends to commercialize or marginalize. By sustaining a …

Climate Variability, Land Ownership And Migration: Evidence From Thailand About Gender Impacts, Sara R. Curran, Jacqueline Meijer-Irons

Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy

Scholars point to climate change, often in the form of more frequent and severe drought, as a potential driver of migration in the developing world, particularly for places where populations rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. To date, however, there have been few large-scale, longitudinal studies that explore the relationship between climate change and migration. This study significantly extends current scholarship by evaluating distinctive effects of climatic variation and models these effects on men’s and women’s responsiveness to drought and rainfall. Our study also investigates how land ownership moderates these effects. We find small, but significant, increases in migration above …

Climate Change, Gender Inequality And Migration In East Africa, Medhanit A. Abebe

Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy

East Africa, one of the most volatile regions in Africa, has been suffering from enormous problems caused by population growth, weak governance, war, and famine. Recently, the advent of climate change has exacerbated these pre-existing problems. These impacts are not felt equally across populations, and, according to various studies, disproportionately affect women. Despite reforms, rural East African women still struggle to access resources or participate in decision-making processes. As a result, they have a weaker ability to adapt to climate change than men. This weaker adaptive capacity influences migration patterns between the genders, and creates its own set of problems. …