Environmental Law Commons^™

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Approaches To Shaping International Outer Space Law And Norms, Ariel G. Silverman

Seattle University Law Review

This article explores convergences and divergencies in the United States and PRC’s responses to the stalemate in the United Nations over the future of outer space resource governance. I do so by systematically analyzing these leading space-faring nations’ policy-positions and tactics deployed to shape norms around three substantive areas of outer space resource governance: rights of ownership and scope of utilization of space resources, mechanization of the “benefits sharing” principle, and the rights and responsibilities of the private sector. I theorize that these leading space-faring nations have adopted divergent approaches due to their differing historical relationships with international law and …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

From Copper To Ashes: Violations Of The Right To A Healthy Environment And Health In Tsumeb, Namibia, Sarah Dávila

Fordham Environmental Law Review

The rights to a healthy environment and health are not new human rights to the African System for Human and Peoples’ Rights. In fact, they have been protected under the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights since 1981. However, outside of the established normative framework, a pressing issue arises in States where the extractive industry maintains a stronghold on the economy. The people of and around Tsumeb, Namibia, have been subjected to egregious human rights abuses and an environmental crisis. Their lives and environment have been historically and continuously destroyed due to the foreign-corporate extractive industry. The mining and …

The U.S. Critical Minerals List: Between A Rock And A Hard Place, Wesley Peebles

Fordham Environmental Law Review

Critical minerals are minerals found essential to economic and national security and vulnerable to supply chain disruptions. Congress and presidents from both political parties have actively promoted critical mineral production, offering up billions of dollars to secure mineral supply chains. The federal government has invested to increase domestic mineral production, grow global partnerships, and reinvigorate U.S. industry in an attempt to reduce the risk of supply disruptions for these valuable minerals. To identify which minerals are critical to the United States, Congress tasked the Secretary of the Interior, acting through the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), to evaluate and identify a …

“The Needs Of The Many Outweigh The Needs Of The Few”: A Plan For A New Farm Bill That Promotes The Health And Welfare Of Humans And Nonhuman Animals, And Protects The Planet On Which We Live., John Lieberman

Fordham Environmental Law Review

The Farm Bill was created in 1933, with the passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act. The Bill was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, designed to assist farmers struggling with low prices during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl era. Thus the era of the farm subsidy was born. Crafted in a different time, with technology, knowledge, science and an economy that today would be considered obsolete, the basic mechanisms, and financial support, have nevertheless lived on.

The myriad of problems that have arisen since that time within an agriculture industry that has flourished on the taxpayer dime …

Laudato Si’ And The Limits Of Law: Reflections On The Vocation To Protect Integral Ecology, Lucia A. Silecchia

Fordham Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Earth’S Lungs Collapse: How Wetland Loss Threatens Air Quality After Sackett V. Epa, Julia A. Hicks

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

No abstract provided.

Navigating Radical Indeterminacy In The Struggle For A Global Collective Consciousness: The Question Of Eco-Justice And Law Or Universalize The Pluriverse: A Manifesto, More Or Less, Omar Auf

Theses and Dissertations

The processes of interpretation, communication, and re-interpretation leads to the emergence of an approximated collective consciousness, for which it may be struggled and contested by hegemonic. The dominant forces of this contest, capitalism and nationalism, lead to an interdivided world: one that possesses the tools to empathize with each other but is instead leading people to keep their heads down and focus on surviving their own contexts, perceived as existing within different historical times on the same timeline. This leads to legal and justice systems that fail their claim to universality and/or impartiality. Incorporating an ecological lens to justice within …

Wildearth Guardians V. U.S. Dept. Of Agric. Animal And Plant Health Inspection Serv. Wildlife Services, Luke A. Zagar

Public Land & Resources Law Review

WildEarth Guardians v. U.S. Dept. of Agric. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Serv. Wildlife Services considers whether Predator Damage Management (“PDM”) programs in Wilderness Areas violate the Wilderness Act and whether the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services (“Wildlife Services”) violated the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) in issuing its Final Environmental Assessment (“EA”) and Finding of No Significant Impact (“FONSI”). The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed its prior holding in Forest Guardians v. Naimal & Plant Health Inspection Serv., finding that “the Wilderness Act does not prohibit Wildlife Service …

Green Rules, Fragmented Fields: Member-State Approaches To Sustainability In Eu Competition Law, Niccolò Galli, Armando Santoni

Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies

This article provides a comparative, normative-evaluative examination of how sustainability is being incorporated into European competition law. Combining doctrinal legal analysis with economic reasoning, it clarifies competing definitions of sustainability, maps the contest between the consumer-welfare paradigm and sustainability proponents, and evaluates the legal and institutional implications of the Commission’s 2023 Horizontal Cooperation Guidelines. Drawing on national initiatives across Member States plus the UK, the study highlights contrasting instruments, from Austria’s statutory environmental exemption to the Dutch soft-law safe harbour and Greece’s experimental sustainability sandbox, and shows how these divergent approaches produce fragmentation and legal uncertainty for cross-border cooperative initiatives. …

International Governance Of Ocean Iron Fertilization Research: A Case Study Of The Proposed Exploring Ocean Iron Solutions Field Experiments, Ashwin Murthy, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Ocean iron fertilization (OIF) has been a subject of scientific research since the 1980s. The primary international legal instruments regulating OIF are the 1972 Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter (London Convention or LC) and the 1996 Protocol to that Convention (London Protocol or LP). To guide regulation of research activities, under the LC and LP, the Assessment Framework was developed.

To demonstrate how domestic regulators might use the Assessment Framework, this paper explores its application to recently proposed OIF field trials advanced by the Exploring Ocean Iron Solutions (ExOIS) research consortium. …

The Undue Degradation Of "Undue Degradation": How Loper Bright Threatens To Weaken Environmental Protections For Domestic Lithium Operations, Griffin M. Krawitz

William & Mary Law Review

On October 24, 2024, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) approved the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project, a seven-thousand- acre mining operation in the middle of the Nevada desert. Denoted as the “first domestic lithium project to get full regulatory approval under the Biden Administration,” the new mine is projected to supply enough batteries to power roughly 370,000 electric vehicles (EVs) every year for the next twenty-three years. Despite concern that the mine parallels and threatens the habitat for the Tiehm’s buckwheat (the only known habitat containing the critically endangered and culturally significant flower), the BLM has been adamant that its …

Flexible Funding Authorities To Support Tribal Climate Adaptation, Monte Mills, Sydney Anderson, Lauren Young

Articles

This project is part of a policy research effort intended to support Tribes, federal agencies, and Tribal and non-Tribal organizations in addressing some of the climate adaptation barriers and needs experienced by Northwest coastal Tribes. Accessing and administering Federal funds is a significant challenge for Tribes. Existing federal funding sources are often accompanied by rigid rules that make it difficult for Tribes to flexibly allocate funds as needed, and include strict qualification criteria that limit Tribal access to funds. Short-term funding cycles can be disruptive to long-term staffing and project needs, and are often misaligned with Tribal priorities.

New York Environmental Legislation In 2025, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

In 2025, New York State overhauled its State Superfund law and extended the State Superfund Program for ten years. The state also enacted laws restricting chemicals in menstrual products and firefighter personal protective equipment; expanding the extended producer responsibility program for batteries to include electric scooter and bike batteries; and protecting monarch butterflies and horseshoe crabs. These and other new and amended environmental and energy laws — as well as notable vetoes — are discussed in this article.

Amendments to two of New York’s most important laws may be up for consideration by the Legislature during the current session. Governor …

Fighting The Black Snake: The Dapl And The Case For Indigenous Environmental Stewardship, Kenny Moll

Student Theses 2015-Present

This thesis analyzes the current scope of environmental injustice on Native lands in the U.S. Specifically it examines The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and its impacts on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North Dakota. Western colonialism and capitalism have dominated North American ecosystems since their forcible introduction hundreds of years ago, causing the commodification of natural resources and leading to injustices such as that of the “Black Snake.” However, the story of The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s resistance will be analyzed through the framework of Indigenous philosophy and environmental justice. Chapter 1 analyzes the implementation of the DAPL and …

Habitat Destruction: The Where Of Biodiversity Law, Andrew W. Torrance Ph.D., Bill Tomlinson Ph.D.

Akron Law Review

The existence of appropriate habitats is essential to the continued existence of all species with which humans share the Earth. However, humans are currently enacting changes around the globe--anthropogenic environmental disruption--that threaten the habitats of many species. In this article, we first summarize existing habitat-related law in various countries, including legal designation of areas for protection (e.g., national parks), laws that enable conservation organizations to purchase but not utilize development rights, and international treaties such as the Convention on Biological Diversity or the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance. We then propose a suite of novel approaches …

Environmental Litigation In The Trumpa Era, Public Interest Law Students Association (Pilsa)

2025–2026 Flyers

Join us for a conversation about the current state of climate litigation in the US.

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.