Category: Environmental Law
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The Glyphosate Debate: Challenging Federal Preemption of State Failure-to-Warn Claims
By Daniel Zayas — Over the past decade, thousands of cases have reached federal courts to gain redress for injuries that plaintiffs have sustained while using Roundup, a popular pesticide manufactured by American agrochemical corporation Monsanto to kill weeds and insects in farming and landscaping. The flood of lawsuits comes in the wake of a…
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The Puzzle of Federal Indian Law: The Doctrine of Preemption in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta
Carolina Pardo — In his concurring opinion in United States v. Lara (2004), Justice Thomas writes, “Federal Indian policy is, to say the least, schizophrenic.” Justice Thomas aptly characterized Federal Indian law as contradictory and inconsistent. Since Christopher Columbus stepped on the sands of the Bahamas in 1492, the relationship between Indigenous people and Western…
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Hypocrisy vs. Sovereignty: Accounting for the Colonial Vestiges of Public Law 83-280 in Alaska
Dane Lester — Over the past three hundred years, the United States has expanded from a series of British royalist colonies on America’s East Coast to a fully-fledged democratic nation taking up the third-largest land area of any country in the world. As a result of its conquest, the U.S. claimed jurisdiction over the land…
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To Infinity at the Expense of the Pond
By Jaylee Witcher — Just barely within the borders of the United States, Boca Chica Beach is home to a plethora of species, including shorebirds. Neatly within its silt and sand, these birds nestle their eggs, relying on the Texas heat for incubation. Sadly, their ability to hatch has a competitor: SpaceX, the aerospace company…
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Global Climate Change Litigation: A New Class of Litigation on the Rise
By Diya Kraybill — As climate change has come to the forefront of the public consciousness in recent years, we have seen increased global urgency and public awareness regarding this issue. This awareness has led to the advent of a new and ever-evolving body of environmental law related to mitigating climate change risks. …
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How Long Will China’s Animal Cruelty Laws Have to Wait?
By Leyuan Ma — In April 2020, a university student in China’s Shandong Province was expelled from school after videos of him mercilessly torturing and murdering over 80 stray cats surfaced on the Chinese internet; in October of the same year, a man from Shanxi Province poured boiling water over a pregnant cat, killing her…
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The Forgotten Voices: Power Imbalances in Guatemalan Investor-State Dispute Settlements
By Ava Peters — On June 13, 2012, Yolanda Oquelii, leader of the La Puya Peaceful Resitance movement in Southern Guatemala, became the subject of an assassination attempt. She was targeted for starting a non-violent protest, together with many other brave women and men from her community, against a gold mining operation near their homes.…