Environmental Law Commons^™

Land Use And Sovereignty Along The Catawba River, Thomas C. Brugh, Lucile C. Rencher

Student Scholarship

This document-based case study explains how land-use change along the Catawba River Corridor (Lancaster and York Counties, South Carolina) has been produced through the interaction of property rights (dominium) and rule-setting authority (imperium), showing why sovereignty continues to shape development even after land disputes appear “settled.” Through analyzing legal records (Treaty of Nation Ford, the 1959 Catawba Division of Assets Act, the 1986 Supreme Court timing decision, and the 1993 Settlement Act), planning documents, parcel records, and field observations, we trace how shifting jurisdiction and title certainty structured what kinds of land uses were possible and when. We argue that …

Volume 14 Masthead

American Indian Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Legal History: The Curious Case Of The Disappearing Unceded Lakota Territories, Sebastian F. Braun

American Indian Law Journal

This Article discusses whether the Lakota Nation still has title to the unceded territories outlined in the Treaty of 1868. While many accounts focus on the supposed diminishment of the Great Sioux Reservation, the question of the unceded lands has largely been forgotten. It has renewed relevance in the context of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which crosses the lands. From a broader perspective, the case raises questions about how history is understood, constructed, and selected in American Indian Law cases. Most legal cases, especially those concerning treaty rights, are rooted in an interpretation of history; if that history is misinterpreted …

Expansion Of Federal Benefits To Non-Native Adopted Children, Anna-Grace Hockensmith

American Indian Law Journal

There is palpable tension between tribal sovereignty and federal administrative control in the distribution of federal benefits to members of Tribal Nations. This tension is felt by adopted non-Native children who might struggle to receive federal benefits even though the tribe of their adopted parent(s) has accepted them as a member. This Note explores how adoption of a non-Native child by a tribal member intersects with tribal membership and whether that membership should be enough for the child to receive federal benefits.

The Note discusses four main topics, including: (1) tribal membership, adoption, and current federal enrollment criteria; (2) an …

Unlocking The Benefits Of Transparent And Reusable Science For Climate Risk Management, Adam B. Pollack, Lisa Auermuller, Casey D. Burleyson, Jentry Campbell, Madison Condon, Courtney Cooper, Matteo Coronese, Sönke Dangendorf, James Doss-Gollin, Prabhat Hegde, Casey Helgeson, Robert E. Kopp, Jan Kwakkel, Corey Lesk, Justin Mankin, Robert E. Nicholas, Jennie Rice, Samantha Roth, Vivek Srikrishnan, Moira Scheeler, Nancy Tuana, Chris Vernon, Mengqi Zhao, Klaus Keller

Faculty Scholarship

People around the world seek climate risk information to guide their decisions. For instance, projections about future flood risk inform where households choose to live, how lenders manage credit risks, and which communities receive federal funding. Yet data limitations and fundamental validation challenges raise important concerns about the reliability of such projections. The principles of transparency and reusability help address these concerns by enabling scrutiny of assumptions and methods, development of foundational data and tools, and consistent application of evaluation standards. While there is ongoing debate about how much transparency commercial climate risk services should provide, many expect noncommercial actors …

Beyond Icwa: Within Family Court Systems, Mixed Indigenous Families Confront Ongoing Jurisdictional Violence, Nis Wilbur

American Indian Law Journal

Mixed Indigenous families (MIFs) navigating parental custody in the United States can find themselves trapped in a Battleship®-style jurisdictional maze, where tribal, state, and federal authorities collide unpredictably. This legal mess threatens to separate children from their tribal communities, undermines tribal sovereignty, and can force families into years of costly litigation. The problem is rooted in centuries of white supremacist law and policy that systematically dispossess tribes of culture and self-governance: from the Marshall Trilogy to the boarding school era and harmful adoption schemes. Today, legal frameworks like the UCCJEA remain insufficient as they minimize or ignore tribal civil jurisdiction, …

Table Of Contents

American Indian Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Tribal Rules Of Evidence, Nicole Morote

American Indian Law Journal

Rules of evidence shape litigation practice across the country. In this sense, they govern the truth as it enters the court. Legal scholarship has yet to study tribal approaches to evidence— an area with tremendous promise for legal practitioners and evidence rulemakers alike.

This Article is the first to do so. It analyzes an array of tribal evidence codes across the United States. It reveals three frameworks that describe tribes’ approaches to the Federal Rules. In doing so, it offers a modest contribution to the nascent intersection between Tribal law and evidence studies: crucial insight into tribal systems’ unique needs, …

Workers’ Compensation Codes In American Indian* Tribal Nations, Autumn N. Siegel

American Indian Law Journal

This Article examines various Tribal Nations’ experiences in developing their own workers’ compensation systems using a comparative law and legal development approach, including direct interviews with a diverse range of tribal members. Tribal Nations’ self-created workers’ compensation codes predominantly rely on local models and expertise to establish and operate their systems. However, Tribal Nations also infuse their own cultural values into their codes, incorporating tribal perspectives and priorities such as valuing traditional medicine and peace-making alternative dispute resolution, providing more generously to volunteers, and incorporating return-to-work programs into their workers’ compensation systems. Some Tribal Nations also find it necessary to …

Advancing The Rights Of Nature: Lessons From Sauk-Suiattle V. City Of Seattle, Harry S. Katz

American Indian Law Journal

Advocates for the “rights of nature” seek recognition of legal rights for natural elements such as mountains, rivers, and non-human species as a means of protecting the environment. In the United States, Tribal Nations have been at the forefront of this nascent movement. In a 2022 Washington state case, the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe sued the City of Seattle, alleging that the City’s hydroelectric dams on the Skagit River infringe upon the rights of salmon. Those rights, they claim, include the salmon’s rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve. The case, known as Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe v. City of Seattle, …

Native History Is United States History: How United States History Censorship Leads To Passive Acceptance Of Racial Discrimination And Furthers The Decline Of Tribal Sovereignty, Nickolasa A. Jackson

American Indian Law Journal

Native stories are embedded in the United States Constitution, property law, and the nation’s legal and political framework, but education frequently omits these truths. Such erasure perpetuates misunderstanding, invisibility, and hostility toward Native communities, obscuring the reality that the United States was built through the dispossession, coercion, and suffering of Indigenous Peoples. Whitewashing history has allowed the nation to claim moral virtue and industriousness while denying the foundational role of Indigenous Peoples. The Article emphasizes that Native rights, whether land, water, or other treaty-protected entitlements, as well as inherent rights such as tribal sovereignty, are not charitable or discretionary; they …

U.N.Masking American Exceptionalism: How International Frameworks Can Inform American Indian Policy, Kaitlin Reese

American Indian Law Journal

“U.N.masking American Exceptionalism: How International Frameworks Can Inform American Policy,” serves primarily to examine and criticize how American case law, such as Johnson v. M’Intosh, has been used in foreign courts to justify the Doctrine of Discovery and how, despite many other courts eventually acknowledging it as a harmful rule of law in meaningful ways, the United States has done no such thing. This Article walks through not only the legal cases both at home and abroad, but also delves into the historical background that led up to Johnson, examines the cases abroad that integrate the Doctrine of Discovery and …

Forever Un-Wild: How The Forever Wild Clause “Locks Up” New York’S Closed Correctional Facilities, William Carswell

Pace Environmental Law Review

Article XIV of the New York State Constitution, better known as the “Forever Wild Clause,” enshrines a conservationist ideal into law. The crux of article XIV prohibits the leasing, selling, or exchanging of state-owned land within New York’s Forest Preserve to private entities. Since its inception, this mandate has dictated the State’s approach to management of its Forest Preserve. Whenever New York decides to excise a piece of its Forest Preserve, the cumbersome yet necessary constitutional amendment process is triggered. Renewed attention to this legal requirement is peaking. Since 2009, five former Department of Corrections and Community Supervision sites located …

Surf And Turf: How Litigation Against Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations Can Inform Regulation Of The Aquaculture Industry, Amanda Kapitula

Pace Environmental Law Review

Industrial agriculture dominates the U.S. agricultural industry. On land, animals are stuffed into factory-like facilities, called concentrated animal feeding operations (“CAFOs”), where they are raised to maximize the output of food products. In the process, they produce vast amounts of waste, contaminating surrounding air and water resources. Increasingly, factory farms are making their way into the water as the fishing industry shifts from wild-catch systems to aquaculture operations, or the raising of fish for consumption. While aquaculture has the potential to be a more sustainable option than both wild-catch and animal agriculture, concentrated aquatic animal production facilities (“CAAPFs”) also have …

Climate Preemption And Fossil Fuel Entrenchment, Vincent Nolette

Pace Environmental Law Review

Mitigating the worst impacts of climate change demands a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a transition to renewable, low-carbon sources of energy. This requires building thousands of gigawatts of clean energy at an unprecedented rate and expeditiously retiring existing fossil fuel infrastructure. Yet both parts of this task have been obstructed by state legislative efforts over the last decade—particularly in Republican-led states—to block local governments from reducing greenhouse gas emissions while legally mandating continued fossil fuel reliance. These efforts are accomplished through state climate preemption laws. Framed in neutral or positive terms like “energy choice,” the actual effect …

Center For Biological Diversity V. U.S. Bureau Of Land Management, Erika C. Rader

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The Ctr. for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Bureau of Land Mgmt. marks the Ninth Circuit’s second time considering the Willow Project, which plans to drill oil in Alaska. Environmental plaintiffs brought a series of claims under NEPA, the Reserves Act, ANILCA, and the ESA to stop or stall the Project. Plaintiffs focused on the BLM’s use of a “full field development standard” in assessing alternatives to the Project. Despite the range of claims, the Ninth Circuit allowed the Project to move forward, but on remand required the BLM to explain its reasoning for departing from the full field development standard …

Renewed Injustice: Domestic Investors And The Energy Transition, Fernando Dias Simões

American University International Law Review

The Spanish renewable energy “saga” offers a graphic account of the structural biases of international investment law. Like other countries, Spain introduced economic incentives in support of photovoltaic energy, attracting sizable national and foreign investment. When this regime proved too burdensome on public finances, the government changed it drastically. Around 60,000 Spanish investors were affected. When these investors sought justice, they faced a different fate from their foreign counterparts. While foreign investors had the option to submit their claims to international arbitral tribunals, domestic investors were limited to national courts.

The outcome was a textbook example of unequal treatment of …

When Words Flow Like Water: How The Enbridge Line 3 Pipeline Environmental Impact Statement Failed To Prevent Hydrogeologic Harm In Minnesota, Carly Gutzmann

Journal of Earth and Life Science

For the aquifers of Minnesota, the environmental impact statement (EIS) was a promise of protection that never left the page. An environmental impact statement is meant to be an aid in the decision making process in order to ensure that projects consider potential environmental harms that may occur. However, they are often used instead as another regulatory box to check, rather than as active considerations when planning. As such, a project plan can be flawed from the start—if project developers only consider environmental impacts after they have already put considerable time, effort, and funding into their project as-is, they may …

Protecting Wetlands In The State Of Texas: Assessing Gaps In Regulations, Knowledge, And Professional Roles And Responsibilities, Grace A. Moy

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses

Wetlands rank among earth's most productive ecosystems, providing crucial ecological services such as hydrological regulation, water purification, and habitat support (US EPA, 2015). In Texas, however, rapid urbanization, inconsistent policy enforcement, and the absence of statewide protection frameworks of hastened wetland degradation (Brody & Kang, 2011). Without a robust state regulatory framework (Environmental Law Institute [ELI], 2020), these ecosystems face increasing threats from development and hydrological disturbances.

This thesis aims to identify regulatory and knowledge deficiencies that influence Texas’ current wetland protection status and to offer targeted professional recommendations for landscape architecture professionals to address these shortcomings in future public …

The Deregulation Of Cancer, Daniel G. Aaron

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Fifty years ago, the U.S. embarked on a radical new path. Under pressure from the environmental movement, Congress passed an array of statutes aimed at regulating carcinogens out of our world. This regulatory experiment sprawled from air and water to food and consumer products.

Legal scholars have paid scant attention to this wave of cancer regulation despite its size and importance and the public’s apparent interest in avoiding carcinogens. But there is a growing literature finding flaws with individual regimes within the framework, such as the Clean Air Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and the Tobacco Control Act. In …