LAWS209

This course examines environmental human rights issues through a social justice lens. While human rights law
recognizes that everyone, everywhere, has the right to live in a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment,
we see that some people, especially underrepresented groups, are denied this fundamental right. For instance,
toxic dumping sites are predominantly located in minority neighborhoods, climate-related disasters disparately
impact communities, and environmental law and policies rarely enables participation of marginalized groups
in decision-making processes. This course aims to critically evaluate the disproportionate distribution of
environmental burdens on marginalized communities by utilizing environmental justice and human rights
frameworks. It seeks to develop legal strategies to address concerns related to the fair distribution of
resources and burdens, participation, and broader historical and social injustices. We will begin by examining
the foundational principles of social justice and the history of the environmental justice movement. We will
explore multiple intersecting ways in which social inequality, including class, race, ethnicity, indigeneity,
gender, sexuality, ableism, and the non-human environment, structures and sustains environmental injustices
and disparately impacts disadvantaged groups. We will study the various dimensions of social injustice
through a series of case studies from the US, especially focusing on how law is a site of social change. We will
compare the US case studies with the strategies and activism underlying the ‘environmentalism of the poor’
movement in the global south.