Environmental Law Commons^™

The Resilience Of What, Exactly, To What, Exactly, Along The Coast? Adapting To More Than Just Human Migration, Robin Kundis Craig

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

The world’s coastlines are changing as a result of climate change and ocean acidification, creating drivers of human adaptation efforts— efforts that may increasingly include migration inland. Rising sea levels tend to get most of the attention as coastal migration drivers, because they represent the force most likely to physically push residents away from the coast through inundation, coastal erosion, and/or destruction of coastal water supplies.

However, climate change and ocean acidification are also changing the world’s coasts ecologically, and these ecological changes also drive coastal adaptation, testing the adaptative capacity and ecological resilience of coastal communities. This Article examines …

Of Mangroves And Men: Mobilizing Legal Innovations To Protect Coastal Communities From Climate Displacement, Sarah Dorman, Monica Iyer, Kelsey Jost-Creegan

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Around the world, there is growing concern that phenomena related to climate change may render coastal areas unlivable in the coming years and decades. Scientific projections indicate that with high greenhouse gas emissions, sea levels may rise upwards of 6 feet by 2100. Studies repeatedly warn that—absent steep and urgent global emissions reductions— places where hundreds of millions of people currently live will be below projected high tide lines for 2100.

In many coastal areas, climate change often impacts historically marginalized, racialized, and low-income communities first and worst. Such communities are often located in more vulnerable areas like flood plains. …

The Federal Trust Responsibility In An Era Of Coastal Retreat: Climate Relocation, Fiduciary Governance, And The Future Of Tribal Self-Determination, Samuel Kohn

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Climate-driven displacement is no longer a speculative concern for Indian Country. Across our country, from Alaska, to the Gulf Coast, and the Pacific Northwest, Tribal communities confront accelerating erosion, sea-level rise, permafrost thaw, and chronic flooding that threaten not just individual structures, but the territorial foundations of Tribal sovereignty itself. Schools, clinics, water systems, housing, and transportation networks are increasingly exposed to conditions that render continued habitation unsafe or impossible. These impacts do not present as isolated disasters; they manifest as cumulative, slow-onset processes that erode the capacity of Tribal governments to govern in place.

This Symposium Essay advances the …

Cyclones Of Crime: How Environmental Degradation In Haiti Strengthens Gangs In Governmental Power Vacuums And How The International Community Can Respond Beyond Military Intervention, Stephanie Minor

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

In Haiti, the ground beneath people’s feet, both politically and literally, has never stopped shifting, as cycles of gang violence and environmental disasters feed each other in a relentless spiral of instability. This Note intends to be an analysis of the cycle of gang violence and environmental disasters, along with possible legal and organizational solutions. It begins with a very brief historical analysis of how the situation has progressed from state creation to present day and how Haiti’s colonial past shaped its current governance problems. At its creation in 1804, Haiti became the first state founded by enslaved persons through …

Table Of Contents (V. 50, No. 3)

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

Remarks From Environmental Law And Policy Review'S Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Volume 50 is a milestone for the William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review. To that end, on March 20, 2026, the eve of our Symposium, ELPR staff members, alumni, and supporters gathered to celebrate ELPR’s 50th year of scholarship. Hayden Miller, Professor Jonathan Adler, and Jeffrey Regner delivered remarks at the event. Additionally, Professor Lynda Butler, ELPR’s Faculty Advisor from its conception through Volume 49, prepared remarks. This article contains excerpts from the remarks given.

The Legal Framework For Direct Ocean Carbon Capture And Storage (Volume 1: International Law), Romany M. Webb, Korey Silverman-Roati

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This paper focuses on the marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) approach of direct ocean carbon capture and storage (DOCCS), which aims to remove some of the carbon currently stored in the ocean and thereby enable it to uptake additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. DOCCS is still undergoing research, but early studies suggest it could have significant carbon dioxide removal potential. However, DOCCS could also present environmental and other risks, including from the construction of new facilities, the intake and processing of water, and the handling and storage of carbon dioxide. Careful siting, design, and operation of DOCCS systems is …

Bad Faith Disregard Of Benefits And Science In Federal Environmental Deregulation, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Since the beginning of the Reagan administration in 1981, federal agencies have used cost-benefit analysis when making important policy decisions, especially when issuing regulations. In the years since then the methodologies have been refined and enshrined in White House guidance. The second Trump administration has upended these practices by often ignoring the benefits of regulations and only considering the costs. In doing so it often claims that there are such uncertainties about the benefits that they should be disregarded. It uses these claims in support of repealing or softening regulations that prior administrations found would save thousands of human lives.

State Intervention In Local Zoning: Lessons From Housing Applied To Data Centers, Matthew De Boer

Fordham Law Review

There is growing regulatory tension at the intersection of data center development and local land use law. As states aggressively court data centers with tax incentives and economic policies, they have largely declined to regulate where and how these facilities are sited. Local governments, left to absorb the consequences, have responded unevenly, attempting to fit extraordinary land, water, power, and noise-intensive data centers into zoning frameworks designed for far less demanding industrial uses. The result has been a cycle of uncertainty and conflict: developers face unpredictable approvals, moratoria, and litigation, while residents bear escalating infrastructure strain, environmental impacts, and diminished …

The Human Right To A Healthy Environment: Corporate Responsibility In Critical Mineral Extraction, Erika George

Faculty Scholarship

This paper argues that the emerging human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment should guide the governance of critical minerals by incorporating the corporate responsibility to respect human rights throughout supply chains to ensure a racially just energy transition. It frames the climate crisis within the history and political economy of racial capitalism, contending that without rights-based guardrails, mineral supply chains risk reproducing the extractive harms and racialized disparities of the fossil fuel era, including labor abuses, displacement, water depletion, and violence disproportionately borne by racialized and Indigenous communities. Methodologically, the paper combines doctrinal analysis of international norms …

The Tribal Energy Act: A Necessary Step Toward The Electrification Of The Navajo Nation, Carington Lowe, Michael Hamersky

Pepperdine Law Review

The Navajo Nation stands as a sovereign nation, yet many families still lack access to electricity because of enduring historical, structural, and regulatory barriers. This Article identifies the legal and technical barriers that have hindered meaningful progress and argues that supplementing the utility grid with distributed energy resources, such as biodigesters, offers a viable path toward electrification, particularly for remote and rural communities within the Navajo Nation. Biodigesters convert organic waste generated through community practices, such as sheep raising, into biogas through an anaerobic process. This form of energy reflects circular economy principles while also aligning with Diné cultural practices …

Scaling Sustainable Propellants To Address Rocket Emissions: Lessons From The U.S. Aviation Industry, Zhizhou (Josie) Liu

Duke Law & Technology Review

The rapid growth of the U.S. commercial space industry has exposed a profound regulatory gap in addressing rocket emissions. By releasing greenhouse gases and particulates like black carbon, alumina, and water vapor, rocket launches not only contribute to climate change but also accelerate stratospheric ozone depletion. The U.S. aviation industry encountered similar environmental challenges decades ago, which eventually prompted legal and policy frameworks to curtail aviation emission through sustainable fuel technologies. Unlike aviation, however, the space industry now operates in a legal vacuum, with no binding international environmental standards or domestic regulations targeting rocket atmospheric pollution. As rocket emissions penetrate …

Inexorably Entangled Environmental And Knowledge Commons, Todd Aagaard, Brett M. Frischmann

Faculty Publications

For people to effectively share an environment, they usually also must effectively share knowledge about that environment. While seemingly obvious and intuitive, this insight is often overlooked in literature about governing resources as commons. Focusing on the knowledge commons associated with an environmental commons helps to illuminate a host of complex governance dilemmas. This chapter examines the interrelationship between environmental and knowledge commons, weaving together different strands of commons research and practice. Examples discussed include shared pastures, forests, road systems, computer servers, social media platforms, living rooms, and antimicrobial effectiveness/resistance.

Institutional And Ideational Features Of Canadian-Us Fishery Management Networks: Connectivity, Coherence, And Collaboration, Owen Temby, Evelyn Roozee, Dongkyu Kim, Jasper R. De Vries, Derek A. Katznelson, Antonia Sohns, Gordon M. Hickey

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

This article examines fishery management along and across the Canadian-US border through the comparison of collaborative transboundary networks in four regions: the Salish Sea, the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Maine, and the northern region including the Gulf of Alaska and the Hecate Strait. Transnational fishery management is an inter-organizational and multi-jurisdictional enterprise constituted by shared understandings of a suite of tasks and by communications among the participants. We use survey data to summarize the inter-organizational scale and participation in the networks, the centrality of different organization types, the factors that contribute to network formation, other ideational network traits like …

The Disparate Impact Of The California Wildfires On Minority Communities: Exposing Environmental Injustice & Zoning Flaws, Jasmyn Hardin

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Giving Tree Approach: Balancing Transparency And The Deliberative Process In Judicial Review, Anteo W. Chevere

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Ubuntu Philosophy In Nigeria's Environmental Law: A Pathway To Sustainable Plastic Pollution Regulation, Ndubuisi Augustine Nwafor

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Sea Changes In Sue-And-Settle Policy: The Tides Of Transparency And Expediency, Evan B. Fitzgerald

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Boots On The Ground, Toxins In The Water: A Look Into The Present State Of Camp Lejeune Water Contamination, Kaitlyn N. Helt

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Checkmate Or Stalemate: The Epa, California, And The Future Of Waivers Under The Clean Air Act, William B. Gale

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Inheriting The Mess: How Cercla Successor Liability Shapes The Landscape For Asset Purchase Deals, Liam N. Hudson

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

The Human Rights Fulcrum: Using Environmental Rights As Leverage For Change, Rebecca Bratspies

Pace International Law Review

“Give me a lever long enough and a firm place on which to stand and I will move the earth." That is how Archimedes famously described the power of levers and the possibility they create for moving something that otherwise seems immovable. His point was that with the use of distance, a fulcrum, and a lever, nothing is really immovable. This same characterization has been applied to human rights law, and its attempts to disrupt patterns of structural dispossession, discrimination and oppression that bedevil human society. Indeed, the metaphor that human rights are a lever for change is relatively common …

Transnational Private Environmental Regulation: Are States Striking Back?, Errol E. Meidinger

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 11 in Research Handbook on Environmental Regulation, David Williamson, Gary Lynch-Wood & Agne Prochorskaite, eds.

Rapid global trade expansion beginning in the 1990s spawned a parallel expansion in non-state (‘private’) environmental regulatory (PER) programs. They issue regulatory standards, monitor and judge performance, sanction poor performance, and sometimes regulate state activities. PER programs constitute extensive and complex transnational governance agglomerations encompassing environmental certification, corporate social responsibility, and environment-society-governance programs, typically intertwined with governmental and intergovernmental regulatory programs.

Using forestry and climate change examples, this article analyzes key features of PER programs, how they may be growing empirically more …

The Takings Clause And The Environment, Timothy M. Harris

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Congress and state legislatures have been slow to address growing cries for increased environmental protections. Climate change and the attendant sea-level rise, wetland protections, cleanup of hazardous substances, and protections for species listed under the Endangered Species Act often require extensive regulation of private lands to be effective. The political will to implement environmentally conscious regulations varies with election cycles and social mores, but there is a legal—constitutional—impediment that overrides these political winds. The Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause frequently creates an insurmountable budgetary obstacle to broad land use restrictions that may otherwise be implemented to protect the environment.

Government …

A Right Without A Remedy: The Court’S Failure To Quantify The Agua Caliente’S Federal Reserved Water Rights, Lauren Block

Washington Law Review

The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians has inhabited the Coachella Valley region since time immemorial. Through a series of 1870s executive orders, the United States government reserved land for the Tribe to establish a permanent home within the bounds of their ancestral homeland. Underlying this permanent home is the Coachella Valley aquifer, a groundwater source that has been in a continuous state of overdraft for decades. Against the backdrop of climate change, water scarcity, and other concerns, the Tribe sued Coachella Valley’s water management agencies in 2013, alleging the Tribe owned a portion of the water in the aquifer …

From Doctrine To Practice: Shūrā-Centred Islamic Ethics For Sustainable Ecological Solutions, Fatima Dhanani, Cecilee Glaus Jones

Abdou Filali-Ansary Occasional Paper Series

This paper examines how Islamic ethics, when translated into lived practice, generate both moral frameworks and scalable solutions to pressing ecological challenges. Focusing on shūrā, tawḥīd, khilāfa, and taʿaddudiyya, and drawing on case studies of Stewardship Canada and the Aga Khan University’s Carbon Management Tool, the authors show how Islamic values move beyond doctrinal abstraction to guide institutional decision-making, programme design, and community engagement. More than treating ethics as fixed theological propositions, they frame them as negotiated, context-sensitive processes that align with ecological resilience, distributive justice, and economic viability.

Grounded in shūrā …

A Primer On International Agreements Relevant To Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal, Korey Silverman-Roati, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This primer provides an introduction to seven international agreements relevant to marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) research activities in the ocean. Each of these agreements has implications for whether, when, where, and how in-ocean mCDR projects will go forward. The primer is intended to provide policymakers, non-government organizations (NGOs), scientists, and others working on mCDR with an introduction to the agreements and explain their relevance to mCDR. It also offers guidance to those wishing to engage in discussions regarding mCDR under the agreements, which could help resolve open legal questions on their applicability to, and governance of, mCDR.

Regulation Of Coastal Weathering In Massachusetts, Ashwin Murthy, Korey Silverman-Roati, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Carbon dioxide removal (“CDR”) will be needed, alongside emissions reductions, to achieve global climate objectives. One such technique is coastal enhanced weathering (“CEW”), which looks to accelerate the natural processes of weathering of alkaline-rich rocks to remove and sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This natural weathering process occurs slowly — over centuries to millennia — but scientists have suggested the possibility of speeding it up by finely grinding alkaline rocks and spreading them in the coastal zone, where the natural wave and tidal forces will catalyze weathering. As the alkaline rocks weather, they convert carbonic acid present in the …

Law School News: Rwu Law Opens Coastal Resilience Clinic To Visiting Students For Summer 2026 2-25-2026, Helga Melgar

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Outbound Investment Restrictions And International Law’S Challenge, Harlan Grant Cohen

Seattle University Law Review

The Outbound Investment Rule, restricting U.S. investment in certain Chinese advanced technology sectors, has largely been portrayed as an incremental measure, a modest extension to fill loopholes in the existing investment screening regime. But while perhaps the logical next step in the securitization of the economy, the Outbound Investment Rule actually reflects a momentous shift in the relationship between governments and business, one playing out in the United States and around the world and worth attention. Unlike traditional investment screening, the Outbound Investment Rule operates like a sanctions regime, designed not to protect the U.S. economy, but to hamper the …