Environmental Law Commons^™

The Role Of Traditional Environmental Knowledge In Planetary Well-Being, Deborah Mcgregor, Danika Billie Littlechild, Mahisha Sritharan

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Universal Forms Of Influence: Support For Women On Boards, Cindy A. Schipani, Paula J. Caproni

Seattle University Law Review

There are various efforts underway to increase gender diversity on corporate boards, including legislation in California, a recent SEC approved comply or explain rule for companies listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, and efforts by institutional investors such as State Street and BlackRock to recognize the value diversity brings to corporate decisionmaking. Although some of these efforts are being contested in the courts, many companies have begun to comply with these initiatives.

This Article is organized as follows. Part I provides an overview of several efforts to increase gender diversity on boards along with numerous research studies showcasing the benefits …

“Statistics Are Human Beings With The Tears Wiped Away”: Utilizing Data To Develop Strategies To Reduce The Number Of Native Americans Who Go Missing, Lori Mcpherson, Sarah Blazucki

Seattle University Law Review

On New Year’s Eve night, 2019, sixteen-year-old Selena Shelley Faye Not Afraid attended a party in Billings, Montana, about fifty miles west of her home in Hardin, Montana, near the Crow Reservation. A junior at the local high school, she was active in her community. The party carried over until the next day, and she caught a ride back toward home with friends in a van the following afternoon. When the van stopped at an interstate rest stop, Selena got out but never made it back to the van. The friends reported her missing to the police and indicated they …

Domestic Emergency Pretexts, Amy L. Stein

Indiana Law Journal

Whereas emergencies used to be the exception to the rule, they now seem to be the norm. Wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, and contagious diseases dominate our daily lives. Although these are not the traditional types of military emergencies of our past, these non-wartime emergencies can trigger some of the same emergency powers. And with their use comes some of the same concerns about abuses of such emergency powers. Much ink has been spilled analyzing the tradeoffs associated with necessary emergency powers and frequent abuses in the context of foreign threats—resulting in reduced privacy, civil liberties, and freedoms.

This Article is not …

#Metoo And The Corporation In Popular Culture, Brenda Cossman

Seattle University Law Review

#MeToo’s initial virtual explosion in the fall of 2017 was very much about Hollywood, with famous actresses speaking out against famous producers, media moguls and celebrities, exposing the ubiquity of sexual harassment and sexual violence in and around the entertainment industry. Since then, #MeToo has made its way into Hollywood representations without much irony. Films and television shows have explicitly taken up the #MeToo themes, exploring issues of sexual harassment and violence and its afterlives. Many television shows, from the relaunched version of Murphy Brown to Brooklyn Nine-Nine to The Good Fight have incorporated #MeToo themes into episodes exploring the …

A Synthesis Of The Science And Law Relating To Eyewitness Misidentifications And Recommendations For How Police And Courts Can Reduce Wrongful Convictions Based On Them, Henry F. Fradella

Seattle University Law Review

The empirical literature on perception and memory consistently demonstrates the pitfalls of eyewitness identifications. Exoneration data lend external validity to these studies. With the goal of informing law enforcement officers, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, judges, and judicial law clerks about what they can do to reduce wrongful convictions based on misidentifications, this Article presents a synthesis of the scientific knowledge relevant to how perception and memory affect the (un)reliability of eyewitness identifications. The Article situates that body of knowledge within the context of leading case law. The Article then summarizes the most current recommendations for how law enforcement personnel should—and …

Protecting The Ocean - Moving Forward At 50: London Convention/Protocol And Stockholm Declaration, Fiftieth Anniversary Proceedings, Ronán Long, José Manuel Pacheco Castillo, Elnaz Barjandi, Ríán Derrig, Linda Del Savio, Dorothee Seybold, Andrew Birchenough, Fredrik Haag

Conference Papers

Fifty years have elapsed since environmental concerns were brought to the fore of the international community’s attention. The year 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the London Convention and the Stockholm Declaration, two landmark international instruments that set a path towards the current international environmental regulatory framework. The International Maritime Organization and the World Maritime University hosted the joint International Academic Conference ‘Protecting the Ocean – Moving forward at 50: London Convention and Stockholm Declaration’ with the aim of raising awareness, discussing ocean-climate-related topics, and charting new avenues for impactful future research and policy initiatives. This report …

Table Of Contents (V. 47, No. 2)

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

The Need For Additional Landslide Regulation: Examining Flooding Through A Case Study, Kristen Gartner

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Natural disasters are increasing at an alarming rate. As of this writing, the top five deadliest disasters occurred after 1970, and the top five most economically devastating occurred in the years since 2005, with three of them occurring in 2017. These increasing storms are exacerbated by the worsening of climate change and global warming. The problem will continue to increase if federal and state governments fail to properly regulate and prepare for these natural disasters. This Note will specifically discuss the regulation and prevention of landslides by comparing them to the regulation of flooding. Other examples of natural disaster regulation …

The Post-Shelby Southern Struggles, Marla Zappa

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Comments On U.S. Funding For Ghg Corporate Reporting Standardization, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment, Sabin Center For Climate Change Law

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

The Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (“CCSI”) and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law (“Sabin Center”) are pleased to submit our joint comments on how appropriations made to the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (“IRA”) can best be used to enhance the agency’s efforts to standardize corporate climate commitments, improve transparency around greenhouse gas reductions, and accelerate progress towards decarbonization in the corporate sphere. This Comment focuses on the funding provided to the EPA under Section 60111, on Greenhouse Gas (“GHG”) Reporting.

Net Zero Roadmap For Copper And Nickel, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment, Carbon Trust, Rmi, Payne Institute For Public Policy

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

As we seek to meet the challenges of climate change impacts, many commodities will play an increasing role in decarbonizing economies. There are increasing challenges of addressing the emissions from extraction of these commodities needed to support the zero-carbon transition.

CCSI, in a consortium with Carbon Trust, RMI, and the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines, developed the Net Zero Roadmap to 2050 for Copper and Nickel Value Chains to support the copper and nickel mining sectors in taking collective, coordinated action by providing a clear, approachable, and accepted roadmap for decarbonization.

Our key messages …

Climate Change And The Law Of National Security Adaptation, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

The Department of Defense (DoD) is the largest employer in the world, owns and operates an enormous global real estate portfolio, and emits more Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) than many nations. Entrusted with the national security, the DoD is now threatened by a new enemy—climate change. Climate change imperils national security infrastructure while undermining the military’s capacity to respond to climate-driven disasters at home and abroad. However, legal scholarship has yet to address what I call “the law of national security adaptation” and related questions. For example, how do environmental and climate change laws apply to the U.S. military? What laws …

Climate Change And The Specter Of Statelessness, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

What happens when climate change extinguishes entire nations? Neither international nor environmental law has provided a satisfactory answer to this weighty question. Climate change-induced flooding, storm surge, and sea level rise threaten the territorial integrity and habitability of several small island developing states, raising the specter of statelessness. We know that climate catastrophe is coming, but we have failed to take the necessary steps to safeguard several developing nations. This Article argues that innovative legal and policy solutions are needed today to prevent nation extinction tomorrow. I focus on two potential international governance solutions: the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate …

Climate Security Insights From The Covid-19 Response, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

The climate change crisis and COVID-19 crisis are both complex collective action problems. Neither the coronavirus nor greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions respect political borders. Both impose an opportunity cost that penalizes inaction. They are also increasingly understood as nontraditional, novel security threats. Indeed, COVID-19’s human cost is staggering, with American lives lost vastly exceeding those lost in recent armed conflicts. And climate change is both a threat accelerant and a catalyst for conflict—a characterization reinforced in several climate-security reports. To counter COVID-19, the President embraced martial language, stating that he will employ a “wartime footing” to “defeat the virus.” Perhaps …

The Greens’ Dilemma: Building Tomorrow’S Climate Infrastructure Today, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman

Emory Law Journal

“We need to make it easier to build electricity transmission lines.” This plea came recently not from an electric utility executive but from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, one of the Senate’s champions of progressive climate change policy. His concern is that the massive scale of new climate infrastructure urgently needed to meet our nation’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction policy goals will face a substantial obstacle in the form of existing federal, state, and local environmental laws. A small but growing chorus of politicians and commentators with impeccable green credentials agrees that reform of that system will be needed. But how? How …

The Case For Green Product Fixing: Reconciling Antitrust Law With Self-Regulation To Combat Climate Change, Peter Brigham

Emory Law Journal

As corporations continue to prioritize environmental, social, and governance (ESG) improvements alongside profit, cooperation with competitors may be an important part of their toolbox. In particular, cooperation can help to advance initiatives like the elimination of an unsustainable product type, which is a drastic step a corporation likely would not take on its own for fear of hurting its bottom line and customer loyalty. The issue is that agreements among competitors to engage in such steps may violate antitrust laws, as suggested by the Justice Department in the Trump administration and numerous state attorneys general.

This Comment uses the term …

Deals In The Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, And How Law Can Help, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Informed by original empirical research conducted in the Midwestern United States, this Article provides a rich and textured understanding of the rapidly emerging opposition to renewable energy projects. Beyond the Article’s urgent practical contributions, it also examines the importance of formalism and formality in contracts and complicates current understandings.

Rural communities in every windblown and sun-drenched region of the United States are enmeshed in legal, political, and social conflicts related to the country’s rapid transition to renewable energy. Organized local opposition has foreclosed millions of acres from renewable energy development, impeding national and state-level commitments to achieving renewable energy targets …

The Never-Ending Struggle For Tribal Fishing Rights, Adam Crepelle

Faculty Publications & Other Works

The World Trade Organization’s 2022 Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies failed to acknowledge Indigenous rights. This is problematic, particularly in the United States where tribes have constitutionally recognized sovereignty. Three tribes located within California have taken it upon themselves to assert their sovereignty by creating the United States’ first Indigenous Marine Stewardship Area (IMSA). While the tribes’ jurisdictional power over the IMSA is unclear, the tribes are in the initial stages of comanaging the area with the state of California. Collaborations based upon mutual respect are likely to produce positive results for Indigenous Peoples, the surrounding jurisdiction, and the environment.

Norm-Shifting For Win-Win Change, Kalyani Robbins

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Uncharted Waters: Can Water Rights Principles Stem The Tide Of Ecosystem Services Loss?, Kalyani Robbins

Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article will explore the ways in which we might apply aspects of the conceptual framework developed through centuries of water law to the modern need for property interests in ecosystem services.

Water itself is a high-value ecosystem service, largely within the category of “provisioning” ecosystem services. We need access to water to survive, which has resulted in centuries of varying legal approaches to allocating rights to water. Although this right has traditionally been extractive, in the modern era we have developed increasing protections for in-stream benefits as well. While not uniform across jurisdictions, water law is now a highly …

Restorative Justice And The Rights Of Nature: Using Indigenous Legal Traditions To Influence Cultural Change And Promote Environmental Protection, Anne Haluska

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

No Alternative: The Failure Of The Minnesota Environmental Policy Act To Consider Project Alternatives And Proposed Remedies, Kevin Swanberg

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Research Priorities For Climate Litigation, Jessica A. Wentz, Delta Merner, Benjamin Franta, Alessandra Lehmen, Peter C. Frumhoff

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This article characterizes key research gaps and opportunities for scientists across disciplines to do work that informs the rapidly growing number of climate lawsuits worldwide. It focuses on research that can be used to inform legal decisions about responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions and climate damages. Relevant lawsuits include claims filed against government and corporate defendants alleging that they have violated environmental, human rights, constitutional, tort, and consumer protection laws due to their contributions to climate change and failures to control emissions. Constructive attention has recently been given to the important role of attribution science in informing some of these …

Environmental Assessment In A Time Of Rapid Change And High Uncertainty: The Addition Of Resilience Assessment To Nepa, Bronson J. Pace, Barbara A. Cosens

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

This Article turns to ecological resilience theory to understand the behavior of SES [socioecological system] undergoing change. Informed by the emergent and surprising behavior of these complex systems, this Article argues for the option of resilience assessment under NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] for use in application to climate adaptation measures in the United States. The amendment also provides an alternative approach to pre-project judicial review to ensure legitimacy within a more flexible process.

To this end, Part I addresses why an alternative approach to environmental assessment is needed in the context of climate adaptation by providing an overview of …

Separating Litigation: How Seps Demonstrate The Need For Centralized Environmental Civil Litigation, Jon Paul Suttile

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

This Note will proceed in four parts to examine why enabling EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] litigation autonomy over reestablishing the EPA as a traditional independent agency is a better way of achieving uniform enforcement of environmental policy and regulations. Part I will address the history of independent agencies. Part II will briefly overview the arguments for and against independent agencies and discuss how Supreme Court precedent affects independent agency status. Part III will focus on whether the EPA would benefit from independent agency status. Lastly, Part IV will focus on the use of Supplemental Environmental Projects (“SEPs”) in settlement agreements …

The Tide's Coming In: A New Case For Beachfront Property Rights In South Carolina, Alex Boone

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Part I of this Note explores the scientific data as it relates to the impending consequences of climate change on South Carolina’s coast and will introduce the disastrous scenarios that are predicted to arise as a result of rising sea levels and the accelerating strength and severity of extreme weather events. Part II compares the effectiveness of various coastal resiliency tools and highlights the regulatory framework that prohibits their use by beachfront property owners. Part III explores the topic of regulatory takings and their indirect prophylactic nature of protecting citizens from regulatory overreach and offers a case for a South …

Disclosing Esg Matters: Advancing Nonfinancial Policy Through The Sec, Anna Bailey

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

This Note argues that mandatory ESG [environmental, social, and governance] disclosure would be a valuable step in the larger fight against the deleterious effects of climate change. First, standardized disclosure would provide investors a better understanding of the climate risks associated with their investments by increasing the quality of that information supplied. This standardization would be a valuable driver in corporate behavior because mandated disclosure tends to result in shifts in corporate behavior. Previous examples of disclosure for nonfinancial risks, such as disclosure relating to state sponsors of terrorism and use of conflict minerals, illuminate how mandating ESG disclosure will …

The African Century: Renewable Energy Opportunities In Sub-Saharan Africa, Joshua Mackinnon

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Even if the world’s developed nations are able to curb their carbon emissions in the coming years, major hurdles will still exist. One such hurdle is fulfilling energy needs in urbanizing areas, like sub-Saharan Africa. Many global regions are urbanizing but none as rapidly as sub- Saharan Africa. The global share of Africa’s urban residents is expected to grow from 11.3% in 2010 to 20.2% by 2050.

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While sub-Saharan African countries have peculiar social and economic characteristics, there are common elements that allow this Note to focus on the region as a whole. This general approach can be adjusted …

Completing Streets: Improving America's "Complete Streets", William J. Zurborg

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Part I of this Note discusses the history of city planning in the United States, starting in the early twentieth century, as well as the rise of auto-centric cities. Part II examines how states and local governments across the United States are adopting policies called Complete Streets initiatives in order to create safer streets that accommodate pedestrians, cyclists, and public transportation users, as well as cars. Finally, Part III discusses the shortcomings of Complete Streets policies and argues that unless broader measures are taken to address failures in city and road design from a systems perspective, Complete Streets initiatives cannot …