Law Commons^™

Determining An Effective Regulatory Framework For Businesses To Report On The Environment, Climate, And Human Rights, Paco Mengual

Pace International Law Review

The objective of this article is to identify the existing dynamics and clarify the reasoning behind reporting on environmental, climate, and human rights information in search of effective and binding frameworks to enhance transparency. To that effect, this article relates the evolution from a corporate sustainable business focus to reporting on environmental social and governance and increasing corporate accountability. It then expands on defining non- financial information and ESG reporting with regards to recent European Union Regulations (SFDR, Taxonomy) as well as the challenges associated with defining sustainable investments. This article aims to compare and understand the various regulatory strategies …

The Green Future And The Golden Past: Issues And Approaches Regarding The Sustainability Of Historical Structures And Sites, Steven Moctezuma

Pace Environmental Law Review

This Article illustrates the harmonies and conflict between historic preservation and environmental law in the context of urgently meeting climate change challenges. The Article presents an overarching analysis of the relationship between historic preservation and environmentalism, discerning unifying aspects and modern conflicts through statutory laws and case studies. It begins with detailing the parallel goals between the two causes, drawing on key similarities between the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, the main tools for ensuring federal review for each field, and highlighting sustainable refurbishment as a prime example on achieving both ends with the same …

The Need To Reconceptualize Wild Animals Post-Covid 19: Miscoordination Of Wildlife Regulations In China’S Food Legal Order, Yi Seul Kim

Pace Environmental Law Review

Today, China is one of the largest markets for wild animal trading. Yet, wild animals are in a regulatory grey area. There is an increasing need to revisit how wild animals are simultaneously but differently regulated in the food and wildlife protection regimes. Rarely do attempts to understand these two regimes occur, making this article's analysis of miscoordination in these bodies of law crucial in addressing the hindrance of nationwide food safety improvement efforts.

Virtuous Cycles: The Interaction Of Public And Private Environmental Governance, Elodie O. Currier

Pace Environmental Law Review

The climate crisis has provoked a call for action from all sides. Private governance, public regulation, and individual behavior are all vital pieces of our path toward decarbonization and climate adaptation. Despite this, some scholars and policymakers argue that private environmental governance undermines public efforts to regulate climate harms. This paper draws on existing scholarship in law, policy, and psychology to answer these critiques, proposing four taxonomies of beneficial public-private collaboration on environmental governance. It then applies these models, tracking the shift in U.S. environmental legislation from “polluter pays” to “beneficiary pays” strategies to show a shift from rivalry to …

The End Externalities Manifesto: Restatement, Loose Ends, And Unfinished Business, J.B. Ruhl

Pace Environmental Law Review

Professor J.B. Ruhl observes in his article, “The End Externalities Manifesto: Restatement, Loose Ends, and Unfinished Business,” that Elliott and Esty’s proposal for a rights-centric system of environmental law focuses narrowly on a right to recover compensation for harms to human health caused by pollution. He offers suggestions for implementing that proposal, such as using the concept of ecosystem services to trace how harm to ecosystems can cause harm to human health, and he proposes how Elliott and Esty could extend their rights-centric system to a broader conception of human rights and the environment.

Natural Resource Systems And The Evolution Of Environmental Law, Monika Ehrman

Pace Environmental Law Review

Professor Monika Ehrman provides a pragmatic response to Elliott and Esty’s proposal to end all environmental externalities, which she refers to as an “environmental law moonshot.” She examines the value of transforming environmental law and dreaming big as Elliott and Esty recommend, while discussing the practical considerations of doing so. Her considerations include incentivizing technological advancement, compensating environmentally harmed communities to address systemic issues, and breaking down silos in environmental law.

A Balanced Prescription For More Effective Environmental Regulations, W. Kip Viscusi

Pace Environmental Law Review

Government agencies increasingly base the structure and approval of environmental regulations on a benefit-cost test. For regulations that pass this test, total benefits exceed total costs. Under a benefit-cost framework, the degree of regulatory stringency is set at an economically efficient level whereby the tightness of the regulation is increased up to the point where the incremental benefits equal the incremental costs. Setting regulatory standards to achieve the efficient degree of pollution control does not fully discourage entry into polluting industries, provide compensation to those harmed by pollution, or establish meaningful incentives for effective enforcement. This article proposes that the …

Environmental Law For The 21st Century, E. Donald Elliott, Daniel C. Esty

Pace Environmental Law Review

In this issue, Professors Elliott and Esty expand on their original proposal and respond to critics.2 They apply their perspectives as practitioners, as well as academics, to develop their vision for environmental law in the 21st century. They establish three legal duties that should apply to entities that release potentially harmful materials into the environment. Professors Elliott and Esty contend that such entities have a duty (1) of research and disclosure to assure the public that any environmental releases are not harmful, (2) to minimize harm if they fail to demonstrate the releases are harmless, and (3) to compensate those …

Introduction, Gabriella Mickel, Samantha Blend

Pace Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

Repatriating The Buffalo: Nagpra’S Applicability To Yellowstone Bison Management, Saylor Soinski

Pace Environmental Law Review

The American bison—also known as the buffalo—holds great significance to many Native American people and cultures. Although bison populations have grown since their near destruction in the 19th century, the last remaining wild bison are under threat by the National Park Service’s Yellowstone management plan. Native representatives have had only a limited advisory role in creating the plan, and a number of Native individuals and advocacy groups have spoken out against it. This essay explores the possibility of applying the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to living animals for the first time, categorizing the bison as “objects of …

The Fast Fashion Industry: Formulating The Future Of Environmental Change, Alexa Maratos

Pace Environmental Law Review

This Note focuses on the harmful environmental impacts the fast fashion industry has created, and continues to create, on our planet. In the 1960s, consumer attitude towards clothing shifted drastically when demand for new, disposable clothing skyrocketed. These choices led fashion retailers to give life to the environmentally detrimental breed of “fast fashion.” Moving production from a domestic to an international level, increasing the amount of clothing collections on a yearly basis, and lack of transparency in supply chain are just a few examples of the dangers this industry has created for our planet. The fast fashion industry in particular …

Examining Uranium Mining In The Canyon Mine, Kasha Halbleib

Pace Environmental Law Review

In November 2020, Energy Fuels changed the name of one of its uranium mines from “Canyon Mine” to “Pinyon Plain Mine” in order to put distance between the mine and its historical controversies. However, changing the name does not change the potential harm the mine can cause. Canyon Mine sits fifteen miles from the rim of the Grand Canyon and is built on land sacred to the nearby Havasupai Tribe. The mine stands to not only destroy the health and well-being of the Havasupai people by contaminating their water supply with radioactive elements, but also to destroy the sacred ties …

The Big Chill: Are Public Participation Rights Being Slapp-Ed?, Rachel E. Deming

Pace Environmental Law Review

This article focuses on the Petition Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and addresses a confounding situation caused by Supreme Court precedents that give greater protection to persons who engage in illegal business practices than to citizens who petition their governments. This dichotomy is especially detrimental to environmental protection.

The crux of the conflict lies in which standard courts should use to determine whether the petitioning activity is protected: the subjective Free Speech standard grafted onto Petition Clause activities or the objective standard initially developed by the Supreme Court for petition activities in antitrust cases. The result …

Fatal Fertilizer: Pfas Contamination Of Farmland From Biosolids And Potential Federal Solutions, Molly Carey

Pace Environmental Law Review

Farmers across the country are increasingly discovering devastating levels of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination in their soil, water, and farm products from the spread of biosolid fertilizer. Contamination from these “forever chemicals” is causing farmers to close their businesses, lose their incomes and property values, and confront potential ad- verse health effects from toxic exposure. PFAS are not federally regulated, leaving farmers with no options for federal assistance with contamination crises. This article examines federal regulations that govern the spread of biosolids as well as existing and proposed federal regulations of PFAS. To fill in federal regulatory gaps, …

Death By Committee: Reviving Federal Environmental Justice Legislation To Mitigate Disproportionate Impacts On Vulnerable Communities, Sara Babcock

Pace Environmental Law Review

This Note proposes legislation that provides an avenue for protecting the right to a clean and healthy environment by requiring agencies to consider vulnerable communities before initiating large-scale federal projects. Part I lays out the emergence of environmental justice issues in the United States, including its turning point. Part II introduces both successful and failed attempts at federal environmental justice legislation and analyzes why federal environmental justice legislation continuously fails. Part III dis- cusses how executive environmental justice action becomes pointless to the overall progression of environmental justice and examines President Biden’s progress in the first year of his presidency. …

Examining The Role Of Ags In A Just Transition, Bethany Davis Noll, Terri Gerstein

Pace Environmental Law Review

Tackling the climate crisis requires transitioning from fossil fuel to clean energy, which will necessarily have a significant impact on jobs and the economy overall. The impact of this shift has sometimes been feared as a development that will be harmful to workers and the economy. Fossil fuel jobs are seen as good jobs--well-paid jobs with good benefits and protections--while the emerging clean energy industry has not yet uniformly embraced a high-road employment model. But workers’ rights and environmental concerns are not fundamentally incompatible. There are many policies and tools that can be and are being harnessed to bring about …

Bearing The Torch: A Green New Deal For New York State Agriculture, Jack Hornickel

Pace Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

Environmental Justice For Food System Workers: Heat- Illness Prevention Standards As One Step Toward Just Transition, Sarah Matsumoto

Pace Environmental Law Review

The recent dual crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and extreme heat in the Pacific Northwest have brought environmental injustices for food system workers into stark view. These events prompt us to reflect on how and why our existing laws, some of which expressly include environmental justice “tools,” failed to fully protect food system workers during times of crisis, and what changes we might implement to ensure that people employed in food system jobs are safe at their places of work. These events also revealed the need for proactive, prospective changes now before another crisis occurs; indeed, experts believe that global …

Shifting Away From Coal Power: Prioritizing Ratepayers And Communities Vs. Shareholders?, Shanti Gamper-Rabindran

Pace Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

Green Transitions In A Covid Economy, Nicholas Bryner

Pace Environmental Law Review

As many elements of a Green New Deal languished in Congress, economic policy took dramatic turns instead to address a different crisis: the Covid-19 pandemic. This Essay explores the way in which legal and policy responses to Covid-19 in the United States—particularly as discourse has focused on the impacts of Covid-19 response on labor markets—may provide insight into the political economy of a Green New Deal. New federal spending toward a just transition is structurally much easier to accomplish than developing new regulatory policy through legislation or executive action and avoids judicial policing of administrative authority.

What Makes It A Just Transition? A Case Study Of Renewable Rikers, Rebecca Bratspies

Pace Environmental Law Review

This essay offers New York City’s Renewable Rikers as an example of what a just transition might look like in practice. Specifically, this essay describes how Renewable Rikers connects the need for non-polluting energy infrastructure with a broader conversation about decarceration and racial justice to build an inclusive pathway for prosperity and environmental health for all New Yorkers. The first part of this essay sets the stage with a brief overview of the climate crisis. Part two sketches the contours of what constitutes a just transition as that term is used in the Green New Deal Resolution. Part three situates …

The Future Of Pandemics: Land Use Controls As Means Of Preventing Zoonotic Disease, Bailey Andree

Pace International Law Review

Zoonotic diseases are increasing in frequency as climate change worsens around the world, with the recent COVID-19 pandemic highlighting the inadequate mechanisms in place to counteract disease spread. This article reviews various zoonotic diseases and their patterns of spread, highlighting land use change as the key driver of disease to demonstrate the need for legal intervention. International land use law is a little-developed subsect of environmental law that holds the key to combating this disease spread, and this article proposes solutions through this legal lens. Land use techniques which may be used to combat disease spread include conservation laws, setback …

Green Crimes In The Empire State: Analyzing The Criminal Enforcement Of Environmental Law In New York, Joshua Ozymy, Melissa Jarrell Ozymy

Pace Environmental Law Review

Ensuring compliance with federal and state environmental laws and deterring future offenses can require the application of criminal enforcement tools. Yet we have a limited understanding of how the criminal enforcement of environmental laws has progressed historically in The Empire State. To explore this phenomenon, we undertake content analysis of federal prosecution summaries for all environmental crime prosecutions stemming from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency criminal investigations from 1983 to 2019. We explore which federal environmental laws were violated, determine which charging statutes were used, analyze sentencing patterns, and illustrate the broader themes that emerge in such prosecutions over 37 years. …

Cumulative Impact Analysis In Nepa Climate Assessments, Fred Mauhs

Pace Environmental Law Review

This article argues that CI analysis is a critical tool for addressing global warming. This is because the largest anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions in the U.S. each contributes a vanishingly small portion of global GHG emissions, which alone cannot rise to NEPA’s threshold of “significance” requiring a “detailed statement…on the environmental impact of the proposed action,”i.e., an environmental impact statement (EIS). Yet there is no pollution today in greater need of assessment and understanding than GHG emissions, given the urgency of the impending catastrophe that global warming could mean for our planet.

Silent Spring Revisited – Is It Time To Ban Lead? An Argument For A Federal Ban Of The Use Of Lead Ammunition For Hunting Game Pursuant To The Endangered Species Act, Jaclyn Mcbain Cohen

Pace Environmental Law Review

This note will explore EPA’s authority under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”) to promulgate regulations banning the use of lead ammunition for any purpose. Section II discusses the impact of lead on the environment and wildlife and demonstrates how even small amounts of lead discharged into the environment through hunting practices can have lethal effects on wildlife, especially scavengers, such as the California condor and the grizzly bear. Section III discusses the current regulations that exist to control the discharge of lead into the environment from the use of other common substances, such as paint and gasoline, demonstrating that the …

Inclusion Of Incentive And Punitive Measures In Multilateral Environmental Agreement: A Suggestion On How The United Nations Framework Convention On Climate Change Can Be Utilized To Influence The Reduction Of Gas Flaring In The Oil And Gas Exploration Fields Of Nigeria, Temiloluwa Elijah Olanrewaju

Dissertations & Theses

Gas flaring is categorized as one of the important contributors to greenhouse gases, which increases the risk of global warming and climate change. The overdependence of the modern economy and most industrial technologies on fossil fuels has created a situation in countries where fossil fuels are exploited. The governments rely majorly on the revenue from exporting oil. The IOCs that are engaged in the mining of oil and gas have been able to influence policy and law enforcement on gas flaring to such an extent that the National laws are not enforced, or the stipulated fines are abysmally low that …

Hydrofluorocarbons, Leaky Car Air Conditioners, And Revoked Waivers: The Question Of State-Level Regulation Of Climate Change In The Trump Era, Connor Hilbie

Pace Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ancestral Comprehensions For A Policy For The Future Of The Earth: The Narrative Of The South American Andes In The Face Of The Global Climate Crisis, Erick Pajares G., Eduardo Calvo B., Jorge Iván Palacio P., Juan José Munar M., Carlos Loret De Mola, Darío Espinoza M., Yuri Godoy P., Gustavo Mora R.

Pace Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

Addressing Correlations Between Gender-Based Violence And Climate Change: An Expanded Role For International Climate Change Law And Education For Sustainable Development, Achinthi C. Vithanage

Pace Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

Exploring Climate Framework Laws And The Future Of Climate Action, Jennifer Huang

Pace Environmental Law Review

Every country in the world now has at least one law or policy to address climate change; these laws vary widely in type, scope, and ambition. Although scholarship on the many types and levels of effectiveness of enacted climate legislation is still growing, legal experts are taking note of a recent trend in the adoption of formal climate legislation that is economy-wide or cross-sectoral in scope, sets out both a broad and long-term direction for climate policy, and ensures some measure of accountability for the executive branch. In the absence of a commonly agreed definition, this article will loosely define …