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Susan D. Rozelle, How to Eat the Elephant in the Legal Academy, 31 Columbia Journal of Gender and the Law 44 (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Rebecca C. Morgan, An Essay on Reform: Guardianship in the United States, Festschrift in Honor of Dr. Mokoto Arai (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Grant Christensen, Selling Stories or You Can’t Own This: Cultural Property as a Form of Collateral in a Second Transaction under the Model Tribal Secured Transactions Act, 80 Brook. L. Rev. 1219 (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The Model Tribal Secured Transactions Act was recently proposed by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. This article takes the position that the model act, if adopted, will encourage economic development in Indian Country by creating a set of uniform rules which both non-Indians and Indians can utilize to promote lending. Critically – before it is widely adopted, this article implores the NCCUSL to consider including in the model act – language that would protect tribal cultural property; and in the absence of such language, encourages tribes to modify the act to accomplish this protection. The stakes include the potential loss of priceless real and personal, tangible and intangible, cultural property which itself form the linchpin of both tribal identity and cultural expression for many indigenous communities in the United States and beyond.
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Brooke J. Bowman, Editor’s Note, 20 Legal Writing iii (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Kirsten K. Davis, The First Year Legal Writing Course: Praxis Is Pivotal, 28 Second Draft 5 (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
This article suggests that the first-year legal writing class is important because it is the primary place where students engage in praxis by exercising judgment about both the means for accomplishing a legal task and the desired ends and enacting their knowledge, skills, and values.
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Joseph F. Morrissey, Surrogacy: The Process, the Law, and the Contracts, 51 Willamette L. Rev. 459 (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Jaclyn Lopez, Biodiversity on the Brink: The Role of Assisted Migration in managing Endangered Species Threatened with Rising Seas, 39 Harvard Envtl. L. Review 157 (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Coastal areas in the United States are already experiencing the effects of sea-level rise, and the best available science predicts significant additional sea-level rise this century. In addition to sea-level rise, storm intensity and storm surge are also increasing. In some coastal areas, continuing population growth is compounding the threats of climate change and sea-level rise.
At the same time, one in six of the federally listed endangered and threatened species in the United States is threatened by sea-level rise. Coastal species face displacement, extirpation, and even extinction due to loss of habitat. They are at risk of being trapped between rising sea levels and human development. This threat is exacerbated by unyielding human-made coastal fortifications. This coalescence of factors leads to the phenomenon known as "coastal squeeze "-the loss of transitional habitat between land and sea.
For coastal areas this means that some of the most imperiled species will be pushed closer to the brink of extinction. "Assisted migration" refers to one policy prescription to address this problem. The federal government, through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has the authority-and responsibility-to consider active and passive assisted migration under the Endangered Species Act in managing species threatened with habitat loss due to sea-level rise. The federally protected Florida panther, loggerhead sea turtle, Key tree-cactus, and Lower Keys marsh rabbit inhabit critically imperiled habitat in south Florida and are analyzed to examine this issue from the perspective of species from differing taxa, habitat types, and natural histories. This Article concludes that assisted migration, coupled with preserve and corridor protection and dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, are necessary for the conservation of imperiled species threatened with sea-level rise.
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Jaclyn Lopez, Can’t We Just All Get Along: Reconciling Pesticide Use and Species Protection, 33 Virginia Envtl. L. Journal 184 (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
It is widely acknowledged that pesticides impact the environment and wildlife in deleterious ways. The Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") registers and oversees the use of over one billion pounds of pesticides in the United States each year to control weeds, insects and other organisms. Yet for decades the EPA has been notoriously derelict in its duties to comply with the Endangered Species Act ("ESA"), specifically Section 7(a)(2), which requires the EPA, in consultation with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, to ensure that the pesticides it registers do not harm imperiled species. Indeed, by virtue of its Section 7 failures, the EPA is also in violation of Section 9 of the ESA for the take of listed species, which results from pesticide applications. Similarly, the EPA has not met its regulatory obligations with respect to Sections 7(a)(1) and 2(c) of the ESA.
The EPA identifies the process of initiating Section 7 consultation as a major hurdle to complying with the ESA. After decades of protracted litigation between the EPA, the Services, and environmental nonprofits, the National Academy of Sciences ("NAS") convened a study to review technical and scientific issues regarding the assessment of the risks posed by pesticides to listed species, which the agencies had hoped would address the consultation stalemate. While the NAS report proposes some scientific recommendations that may facilitate the consultation process, it expressly acknowledges that it does not address the significant political and policy obstacles that appear to retard the EPA's efforts to comply with the ESA. This article argues that the EPA should suspend the registration of all new pesticides until it can comply with its mandates under the ESA. It demonstrates that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act ("FIFRA") grants the EPA the authority to suspend registration and that the ESA, supported by over twenty years of case law, mandates compliance.
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Royal C. Gardner et al., State of the World’s Wetlands and Their Services to People: A Compilation of Recent Analyses, (Ramsar Sci. & Technical Briefing Note no. 7, Ramsar Convention Secretariat) (2015)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Ramsar Resolution XI.17 requested the Convention’s Scientific and Technical Review Panel to report on the state of the world’s wetlands and their services to people. As a contribution to this task, this Briefing Note summarizes and highlights for Contracting Parties and other decision makers key points from select scientific reports and articles published in 2013 and 2014. In particular, the Briefing Note discusses wetland status and trends, the loss of wetland ecosystem services and future steps for data collection and assessment. The negative trends shown by recent studies should serve as a call to Contracting Parties to avoid further wetland loss and degradation and to strengthen wetland assessment, monitoring and restoration.
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Klara Van der Ploeg, State Immunity in Jurisprudence of Czech Courts, 5 Czech Yearbook of Public & Private International Law 421 (2014)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
This paper discusses the understanding and application of the doctrine of State immunity in the courts of the Czech Republic. In 2008, the Czech Supreme Court reversed its previous conceptualization of State immunity as absolute and introduced a restrictive approach. In doing so, the Court formulated the concept of so-called "functional State immunity", which comparatively sets Czech practice apart from the practice of other States, and could therefore constitute the very contribution of Czech courts to the development of the contemporary doctrine of State immunity in international law. The paper analyzes this concept and the Czech approach more generally through a comparison with other jurisdictions, as well as with jurisprudence of international courts and relevant international instruments. On balance, the Czech State immunity regime is still largely underdeveloped, and many issues remain open for judicial elaboration in future cases.