Law Commons^™

Food Miles: Environmental Protection Or Veiled Protectionism?, Meredith Kolsky Lewis, Andrew D. Mitchell

Journal Articles

This article examines the international trade, environmental, and development implications of campaigns to convince consumers to make food purchases based on food miles. Buying food from nearby sources has become a popular objective. One of the unmistakable messages of the “locavore” movement is that importing food – particularly food that comes from far away – causes environmental harm. The theory is that transporting food long distances results in the release of high levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere and is thus a dangerous contributor to climate change. Proponents of this view therefore argue that “food miles” – the …

How The "Unintended Consequences" Story Promotes Unjust Intent And Impact., Martha T. Mccluskey

Journal Articles

In the guise of critical analysis of the limits of law reform, the familiar phrase “unintended consequences” serves to rationalize rising inequality and to undermine democratic accountability. This paper examines how the phrase promotes a story of disentitlement, using the recent financial crisis as an example. By naturalizing inequality as power beyond law’s reach, this phrase’s message that benign law is likely to bring unequal consequences dovetails with a seemingly contradictory message that benign intent, rather than harmful impact, is what primarily counts for evaluating inequality.

As part of a LatCrit XV symposium taking a “bottom-up” view of the recent …