This Article offers a revamped model of participatory governance—the Constituent Empowerment Model (CE Model)—which affirmatively shifts power to the voices of marginalized constituents so that they can influence governmental policy. To illustrate how a CE system might be constructed, the Article examines a model recently adopted in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, that is designed to shift the balance of power between the water utility and its customers.

A number of environmental justice screening tools and processes have been developed across the United States in an effort to identify communities experiencing environmental injustice.

Seventy phosphogypsum stacks are scattered throughout the United States, concentrated in low-wealth and Black, indigenous, and people of color communities. These radioactive waste heaps have a long history of failures, and present a substantial hazard and unreasonable risk of harm. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should swiftly move to regulate these environmental and public health hazards. This Article examines the regulatory failures that have given rise to the proliferation of phosphogypsum stacks in vulnerable communities and sensitive environments in the United States.

This Article discusses how disparate environmental burdens can be addressed using environmental justice (EJ) screening tools. It identifies states that have developed state-specific EJ screening tools, analyzes these tools’ functions, and identifies strategies to overcome resistance to them. The authors conducted interviews with multiple stakeholder groups to understand how state-specific screening tools are used, and make a series of recommendations for states to follow as they proceed in their efforts to develop EJ screening tools.

Despite existing laws, communities across the United States are exposed to dangerous environmental conditions that can have devastating effects on public health. One emerging mechanism to address these issues are “green amendments,” self-executing provisions added to a state constitution that recognize and protect the rights of all people, including future generations, to pure water, clean air, and a stable climate.

Faced with interconnected crises—affordable housing, and environmental and climate injustice—in low-income, disadvantaged, and Black and Brown communities, this Comment asserts that President Joseph Biden should adopt the same or similar approach of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and challenge Congress to enact sweeping environmental and climate justice legislation in the first 100 days.

President Donald Trump’s environmental policies appear detrimental to the environmental justice (EJ) movement, but little work has been done to test their true impact on EJ. This Article offers a method for evaluating progress (or lack thereof) across the last three presidential administrations, proposing three metrics for progress: access to legal recourse, consideration of climate change as an EJ issue, and signaling actions.

This Article focuses on an area of rapidly evolving jurisprudence—climate liability litigation. It examines in depth the state attorney general’s complaint filed in Rhode Island v. Chevron Corp. in 2018, alleging various state-law tort claims. It explores the intensely sustained legal battles taking place between states and fossil fuel companies over whether federal courts or state courts should have jurisdiction, which in many respects is the “ballgame issue” for both plaintiffs and defendants.

Over the past 50 years, tremendous progress has been made in reducing air pollution under the Clean Air Act. Nevertheless, while air quality has improved greatly for much of the nation, there are still places where the goal of attaining national standards has still not been reached. This is often true in urban locations that are affected by multiple pollution sources; typically, these areas are also environmental justice communities. Recent events have called attention to the urgent need for concrete action to address the many problems of these communities.

With a contentious presidential election looming amidst a pandemic, economic worries, and historic protests against systemic racism, climate action may seem less pressing than other challenges. Nothing could be further from the truth.