Course | Columbia Law School

This course will examine the Environmental Justice Movement, its origins, tenets, challenges, and strategies, focusing specifically on issues of environmental health addressed by the Movement, including disproportionate exposure to toxics, special problems related to the impact of industrial agriculture, and human health problems associated with pesticide use. The Environmental Justice Movement emerged in the late 1980s, as communities of color organized to oppose the disproportionate siting of toxic sources in their neighborhoods. The Movement offered a critique and alternative approaches to the "greens." At the same time, the movement for racial justice outside of the environmental justice context was struggling with new challenges in and out of the courtroom. What are the core tenets of the Movement? What environmental health issues has the Environmental Justice Movement tackled and how? What legal handles are available to address environmental injustice, and what are their limitations? What approaches have environmental justice activists taken to overcome these limitations and assert their own vision for their communities? What are the roles that lawyers can play - and what is the role of law - in redressing environmental injustice and opening pathways, political space, for community participation in decisions affecting the health and future of low-income communities of color and environmentally overburdened communities, more generally?

In the mid-1980s, studies provided evidence that industrial and municipal facilities and the attendant pollution are often concentrated in low-income communities and communities of color. In response, a body of Environmental Justice Law has emerged which applies broadly to many areas of practice, including environmental and energy law, real estate, and project finance, whether in public interest, government or the private sector. Recently, environmental justice has begun to merge with the international movement toward sustainable development and is resulting in a new environmental regulatory regime that will affect all sectors of development: industrial, commercial, and residential.

This course will explore the beginnings of the Environmental Justice movement and how its goals have been advanced through constitutional and traditional environmental law claims. It will examine judicial and administrative litigation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, Section 1983, and environmental statutes such as the National Environmental Policy Review Act and state equivalents. The course will discuss the political response to the movement as exemplified by legislative and regulatory actions, as well as community and business sector responses, and look at how the issues of environmental justice are addressed internationally. The course will also explore some emerging legal and political definitions and standards for global sustainable development (including climate change) and the interaction with concepts of environmental justice, and analyze the potential impact on future development and capital investment. This course is useful to those students interested in not only environmental law and civil rights but also traditional land use/real estate development, project finance, and securities.