Environmental Law Commons^™

Noise Law, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The rumble of traffic, the drone of air conditioners, the blast of construction equipment. These are the mundane sources of noise pollution that we all experience but rarely think about. Or, if we do think about noise pollution, we don't think of it as a central piece of federal environmental law. This Article, however, demonstrates that noise law is, or was, central to American environmental law, and it offers insights into how environmental protection and administrative governance work today.

In the 1970s, during the height of environmental activism and policymaking, lawmakers recognized noise as a serious pollutant alongside issues we …

The Mysterious Power Of Land Use Law: Constructing A Framework Law For Climate Resilient Development, John R. Nolon, Maureen Hartwell

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article introduces and explains Climate Resilient Development (CRD), which is relied upon by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a primary method of managing climate change. CRD "integrates adaptation measures and their enabling conditions with mitigation to advance sustainable development for all." 1 CRD illuminates the close relationship between adaptive and mitigative development and land use law, particularly the authority delegated to local governments to regulate and incentivize private land development and conservation. The Article unveils a legal structure that is followed in most states to organize local laws that affect land development; as such, it facilitates …

New York's Constitutional Guarantee Of Environmental Rights, Katrina Fischer Kuh, Nicholas A. Robinson, Scott Fein

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

New York is embarking on the interpretation and implementation of potentially transformative constitutional reform, the addition of Article I, § 19 to New York’s Bill of Rights, which provides that “Each person shall have the right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.” To ensure the fulsome and effective implementation of Article I, § 19, and give effect to the intent of the legislators and voters who adopted it, it will be important to provide substantive guidance to courts, government actors, and litigants in the interpretation and application of the new constitutional text. In Pennsylvania and other states, …

Interpreting Congress, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article introduces the concept of congressional interpretation. Congressional interpretation describes a strategy on which the Supreme Court relies, but rarely acknowledges. It occurs when courts try to understand what the law is by looking beyond a specific statute, or even a specific statute’s legislative history, and instead turning to vague beliefs about congressional behavior. Courts use congressional interpretation to: understand the relationship between a substantive statute and subsequent appropriations; evaluate statutes on the basis of post-enactment congressional inaction; and impose assumptions about congressional norms through clear statement rules. For instance, a court considers whether Congress granted statutory authority when …

Representing Climate Wreckers, Camila Bustos

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In recent years, lawyers have become increasingly aware of the implications of the climate crisis for legal practice. Amidst this context, United Nations Secretary General Ant6nio Guterres has urged recent graduates to decline work on behalf of "climate wreckers." This Article examines how professional responsibility rules and principles in the United States should be interpreted on a warming planet, particularly in the context of attorneys representing so-called "climate wreckers" in civil matters. I use the term "climate wrecker" to refer to fossil fuel corporations and trade associations that have engaged in public disinformation campaigns to stall climate action and sow …

Abundance And Other Food Fixations, Margot J. Pollans

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Although most people in the United States no longer devote the majority of their time to food production, processing, and distribution, food remains a daily fixation. This Article explores three driving food fixations--abundance, thinness, and health--and situates each against an inverse fear--scarcity, fatness, and illness, respectively. Mapping these threats onto U.S. food policy, this Article examines, among other policy arenas, food waste policy, nutrition and health claim labeling law, and food additive regulations. Across food policy, these fixations feed what this Article calls the “politics of abundance.” This politics helps to insulate the food industry from deeper systemic reform aimed …

State Responsibility For Disrupting Earth’S Climate System: Anticipating The Icj Advisory Opinion, Natalia Urzola, Nicholas A. Robinson, Léonore Gaboardi Carandell, Daye Chen, Bryce Clark, Madison Routledge Pettus

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) will deliver an advisory opinion on the legal obligations of nations with respect to the mounting damage caused by climate change. This ruling will definitively restate applicable international law, provide a basis for new global policy decisions within the U.N. General Assembly, and provide a predicate for new lawsuits in national courts. To be effective, remedies for breaching a government's duties to avert climate change will require a “collective remedy,” not merely financial compensation. This ruling was sought by law students from the South Pacific and elsewhere; this Article, also by young …

Climate Change, Democracy, And The Major Questions Doctrine, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This brief Essay progresses in four parts. I will first argue that climate change is impacting the Court’s decisionmaking. Next, I will show that the significance of climate change as a modern political issue has caused the Court to downplay the statutory arrangement Congress created in the Clean Air Act. Third, I will suggest that the Court is not genuinely failing to appreciate the design of the Clean Air Act. Instead, the Court is aware of that design and feels the design goes beyond a constitutionally acceptable delegation of legislative power. Confronting the Nondelegation Doctrine head-on, however, would force the …

Beyond Reform: Food Sovereignty And The Future Of Global Food Systems, Smita Narula

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

We live in a deeply destructive food system, and the need for alternatives is clear. Yet state and corporate actors, beholden to an extractive, industrial model of food production, continue to push for incremental reforms instead of transformative action. In response, food sovereignty movements are charting a normative path in international human rights law to secure peasants' rights and promote more sustainable and just alternatives to our industrial food system. Against the backdrop of the political economy of industrial agriculture, this Article compares mainstream approaches to food systems reform with transformative alternatives rooted in food sovereignty. It explores two key …

Community Leadership For Healthy Lakes In New York, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This is the text of a speech given at the 2024 New York State Federation of Lake Associations annual conference on May 3, 2024 in Lake George, New York.

Climate Change And Internal Displacement In Colombia: Chronicle Of A Tragedy Foretold, Camila Bustos

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

One of the key challenges stemming from climate change will be climate displacement, as sudden and gradual events disrupt livelihoods and force millions to leave their homes. Despite the existing scholarship's focus on cross-border movement, the majority of climate displaced people will move internally instead of or before seeking refuge outside their nation's borders. What obligations do states owe to their citizens when those states have historically not been emitters but have still failed to protect domestic populations from displacement related to environmental disasters and climate change impacts? Through exploring the disaster management framework in Colombia and conducting a case …

Avoiding Performative Climate Justice, Katrina F. Kuh

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Article first sketches the contours of precommitment strategies by identifying examples of precommitment strategies in existing climate change law, and contrasting them with other approaches for advancing justice that are not sticky, automatic, and early, and thus would not be considered precommitments. It then contemplates whether and why sticky, automatic, and early precommitments to justice may be an important strategy to advance justice goals in anticipation of and at high levels of warming. It concludes by analyzing the use of precommitments to justice in the context of the expedited siting and construction of renewable energy infrastructure.

Governing Private Governance, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

After the Supreme Court's opinion in Dobbs rejected an individual right to reproductive choice, many private firms chose to govern reproductive healthcare by covering employee access to abortions. As mass shootings continue to plague the country, some firms have decided to govern firearm safety by discontinuing sales of assault weapons. While the climate crisis continues to upend life on Earth, corporate leaders are engaging in private environmental governance by voluntarily reducing their own emissions, demanding reductions within their supply chains, and pressuring peers and competitors to do the same. Each of these endeavors represents a form of private governance in …

Multinational Asset Management Firms & Esg Disclosure Management, Maggie Pahl, Michael Hamersky, Jason J. Czarnezki

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In recent years, the United States, European Union, and United Kingdom have introduced “Environmental, Social, and Governance” disclosure regulations. Multinational Asset Management Firms must now navigate the evolving and varied disclosure and labeling requirements they are subjected to across multiple jurisdictions. This Article provides a brief history of ESG disclosure regulation and provides a summary of the enacted and proposed regulations and identifies the biggest points of contention between the regulations and provides suggestions for a more comprehensive standardized regulatory framework.

Displacing Climate Precarity, Camila Bustos, Julia Neusner

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this Essay, we explore these questions and present a two-part argument. In Parts II and III, we argue that because climate change is exacerbating other drivers of displacement, it is seldom possible to attribute movement to any single factor or to categorize movement conclusively as voluntary or involuntary. Therefore, expanding pathways to safety for all people on the move is the best approach to protect those displaced, directly or indirectly, by climate change and environmental disasters. In Part IV, we argue that, despite attribution and definitional challenges with regard to climate-related mobility, documenting and assessing the role of climate …

Disclosure, Greenwashing, And The Future Of Esg Litigation, Jason J. Czarnezki, Barbara Ballan

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Environmental, Social, and Governance (“ESG”) disclosure movement is expanding both voluntarily, as businesses choose to disclose this information, and mandatorily, as government agencies impose disclosure requirements. As ESG disclosure expands, so do the litigation risks. “Greenwashing” refers to presenting false or misleading environmental or sustainability (i.e., “green”) qualities of products, services, or practices. Businesses may greenwash consumers as well as investors with false and misleading ESG disclosures in advertising, securities filings, or other public statements activating greenwashing litigation from investors and consumers. This Article addresses (1) the laws and regulations that cover consumer and securities greenwashing litigation, (2) how …

Realizing The Right To Food In Maine: Insights From International Law, Smita Narula

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In November 2021, Maine made history as the first U.S. state to constitutionally recognize the right to food. Maine’s right to food amendment— which sought to address widespread food insecurity and corporate control of the food supply—proclaims food as a “natural, inherent and unalienable right,” and empowers Mainers to grow and consume food of their own choosing, affirming their right to food sovereignty. This Article makes three key contributions to scholarly examinations of this historic amendment. First, it situates the amendment within the broader landscape of domestic and global struggles for the right to food and food sovereignty. Second, the …

Eco-Necrotourism And Public Land Management: Last Chance Tourism, Ecological Grief, And The World’S Disappearing Natural Wonders, Robin Kundis Craig, Katrina F. Kuh

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Last Chance Tourism. 500 Places to See Before They Disappear. 100 Places to Go Before They Disappear. As these (real) book titles attest, climate change, often in combination with loss of biodiversity, has created a new kind of ecotourism, which we term eco-necrotourism--the desire to see natural wonders and rare species before they are lost or transformed forever. As a scholarly topic, eco-necrotourism is a small facet of an emerging necessity for climate change law and policy: the need for planners, managers, lawmakers, and policy writers to consider human psychological responses to climate change and its impacts. However, those responses …

Fostering Resilience Within Ecological Civilization: Contributions Of Environmental Law, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

My presentation will examine water, to illustrate the questions that Ecological Civilization presents. I shall address five points: (1) Often proposals for attaining Ecological Civilization raise issues relevant to environmental law, but do not examine the roles that environmental law can serve; (2) environmental law is essential to resolving unsustainable water management issues; (3) scientific studies indicate that trends in global environmental degradation limit the time available for implementing reforms to attain Ecological Civilization; (4) environmental legal systems for environmental impact assessment (EIA) can accelerate efforts to attain Ecological Civilization; and (5) For Ecological Civilization to ensure a firm foundation …

The Dawn Of Environmental Human Rights In New York, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

On Election Day in 2021, New York's voters added Section 19 to the state's constitutional Bill of Rights. They reaffirmed a human birthright to clean air, clean water and a healthful environment. New York's constitutional Bill of Rights now guarantees the liberty that “each person shall have a right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.

New York's Legislature had previously concurred, recognizing that these rights are “elemental.” At the New York State Bar Association's Environment and Energy Law Section's annual meeting on Jan. 25, 2022, I was privileged to deliver a lecture entitled “A New Era …

Climate Migration And Displacement: A Case Study Of Puerto Rican Women In Connecticut, Camila Bustos, Bruni Pizarro, Tabitha Sookdeo

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The climate crisis is increasingly forcing people to flee their homes, whether internally or across state borders. However, existing international and domestic law does not provide sufficient protection for those forcibly displaced by extreme weather events. In 2021, the Biden administration issued an executive order and subsequently a report on the impact of climate change on migration, which marked a first step in federal policy toward recognition of the nexus between climate change and displacement. At the local level, Connecticut has already become a destination for climate-displaced people. For instance, after Hurricane Maria landed in Puerto Rico in 2017, approximately …

The Intentional Community: Toward Inclusion And Climate-Cognizance, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In adapting communities to new levels of fairness, we must resist the notion that building equitable and accessible communities is antagonistic to building climate-cognizant communities. This paper will raise some of the core points in this endeavor and will offer suggestions for finding harmony between the two ends through creating communities with intention.

In Part I, I offer some details on what climate change, if unheeded, portends most in our daily lives. In Part II, I tell tales of two cities to frame the larger discussion. In Part III, I highlight some social, political, and economic history that produced a …

Teaching Sustainable Business Law & The Role Of Esg Lawyers, Jason J. Czarnezki, Joshua Ulan Galperin, Brianna M. Grimes

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article is the second paper in a series laying out the emergence of sustainable business law and the role of ESG lawyers. The first paper, Sustainable Business Law? The Key Role of Corporate Governance and Finance, argues “that ‘sustainable business law’ has emerged as a distinct area of law” and “serves as an introductory explanation to define and understand the growing subject matter at the intersection of sustainability, business, and the law.” That paper also explores the key role that corporate governance and finance play in achieving sustainability, and suggests that “[a] future project for scholars ... is to …

A Brief Legal History Of Wisconsin Conservation, Jason J. Czarnezki, Carolyn Drell

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The State of Wisconsin's longstanding conservation ethic includes the passage of the Conservation Education Statute, which required conservation of natural resources be taught in public schools, and the creation of “Earth Day.” However, a lack of recent interest and scholarship in Wisconsin's important conversation history and development of conservation law has driven us to write this Article which offers a brief legal history of Wisconsin conservation--how the state's conservation values were expressed in law, how its natural resources law has evolved and what that has (and has not) embodied, and how Wisconsin helps us define modern concepts of “conservation.” Specifically, …

A Human Rights Approach To Climate-Induced Displacement: A Case Study In Central America And Colombia, Camila Bustos, Juliana Vélez-Echeverri

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The past decade was the warmest decade ever recorded. As climate impacts intensify, numbers of people displaced and in need of relocation increase. International law has yet to adapt to a changing climate and its implications for those most vulnerable. Experts still debate whether the existing refugee regime could provide a solution for those displaced by climate across international borders, while national governments continue to reckon with the domestic implications of internal displacement fueled by climate impacts. In this article, we apply a human rights lens to climate induced displacement, drawing from two case studies to highlight the human rights …

Confronting State Violence: Lessons From India's Farmer Protests, Smita Narula

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In December 2021, following a year of sustained mass protests, farmers in India forced the repeal of three controversial Farm Laws that attempted to deregulate India’s agricultural sector in service of corporate interests. Farmers feared that the laws would dismantle price supports for key crops, jeopardize their livelihoods, and facilitate a corporate takeover of India’s agrarian economy. This Article situates India’s historic farmer protests in the context of the country’s longstanding agrarian crisis and the corporate capture of agriculture worldwide. I argue that the protests arose in response not only to the Farm Laws, but also to decades of state-sponsored …

Pandemics And Housing Insecurity: A Blueprint For Land Use Law Reform, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

COVID-19, racial inequity, housing insecurity, and climate change have come together to create widespread, large-scale crises. This Article introduces these four pandemics and describes in detail what local governments are doing to combat one of them: housing insecurity. It reviews recent progress with traditional inclusionary zoning requirements, discusses the move toward greater density in single-family zoning, lists strategies being used to remediate distressed housing, and notes the importance of affordable housing as a necessary strategy for preventing lower-income household displacement caused by gentrification. The reciprocal impacts of these four pandemics are clear; local land use leaders should examine how mitigating …

Informational Regulation, The Environment, And The Public, Katrina F. Kuh

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Informational Regulation, the Environment, and the Public generates a typology to analyze how public disclosure functions in informational regulation. In the environmental context, informational regulation compels the public disclosure of environmental information without mandating substantive environmental outcomes in the expectation that disclosure itself will prompt beneficial change in the environmental context. Application of the Article's typology reveals that the emperor has no clothes: Communication of environmental information to the public is considered central to policies employing informational regulation, but the information produced pursuant to these measures largely fails to reach or be understood by lay individuals. For example, empirical data …

Adapting To A 4°C World, Karrigan Börk, Karen Bradshaw, Cinnamon P. Carlarne, Robin Kundis Craig, Sarah Fox, Joshua Ulan Galperin, Shi-Ling Hsu, Katrina F. Kuh, Kevin Lynch, Michele Okoh, Jessica Owley, Melissa Powers, Shannon Roesler, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman, David Takacs, Clifford J. Villa

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Paris Agreement's goal to hold warming to 1.5°-2°C above pre-industrial levels now appears unrealistic. Profs. Robin Kundis Craig and J.B. Ruhl have recently argued that because a 4°C world may be likely, we must recognize the disruptive consequences of such a world and respond by reimagining governance structures to meet the challenges of adapting to it. In this latest in a biannual series of essays, they and other members of the Environmental Law Collaborative explore what 4°C might mean for a variety of current legal doctrines, planning policies, governance structures, and institutions.

Eaters, Powerless By Design, Margot J. Pollans

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Food law, including traditional food safety regulation, antihunger programs, and food system worker protections, has received increased attention in recent years as a distinct field of study. Bringing together these disparate areas of law under a single lens provides an opportunity to understand the role of law in shaping what we eat (what food is produced and where it is distributed), how much we eat, and how we think about food. The food system is rife with problems--endemic hunger, worker exploitation, massive environmental externalities, and diet-related disease. Looked at in a piecemeal fashion, elements of food law appear responsive to …