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Cities, E-Commerce & Public Health: 3 Legal Pathways to Limiting Freight Vehicle Emissions
Get PDFIn recent years, cities have become increasingly defined by e-commerce – the sprawling network of goods delivery from central warehouses to neighborhood distribution centers to residents’ front doors. This growing network of warehouses and the freight vehicles that serve them contribute significantly to a community’s greenhouse gas emissions and exposure to harmful pollutants like nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide and particulate matter. Moreover, so-called last-mile delivery warehouses (or distribution centers) are proliferating, largely in low-income communities and communities of color, where residents are exposed to increasing traffic, pollution, and harmful health impacts.
While a handful of cities have pursued approaches to lessening tailpipe emissions from freight vehicles, such as through electric vehicle and cargo bike pilot programs, there is a clear gap in regulating the emissions attributable to e-commerce warehouses and the vehicles that enter and exit them. In part, cities have had difficulty limiting freight vehicle emissions because federal law preempts certain state and local vehicle restrictions. Three policy approaches are discussed herein: (1) rules for drayage trucks within California’s Advanced Clean Fleets rule; (2) site-based emissions standards for warehouses (also known as indirect source rules); and (3) zero-emissions delivery zones in which zero-emissions vehicles (ZEVs) have priority access to loading and unloading areas. Each of these presents legal complexity, but elements of them can be available to cities looking to control emissions associated with e-commerce delivery.
Despite the relatively recent nature of e-commerce proliferation, last-mile delivery warehouses perpetuate longstanding patterns of environmental injustice, exposing low-income communities and communities of color to significant and harmful truck pollution. And though the federal law landscape can be murky, the CAA, EPCA and the FAAAA allow some room for local governments to place limits or otherwise address pollution and other e-commerce impacts. The legal tools available to address their impacts are necessarily evolving, and they offer significant promise, particularly for jurisdictions willing to calibrate an approach carefully to applicable legal frameworks and to their local context
Annual SEQRA Review: Project Applicants Winning More Cases
Get PDFNew York courts are showing impatience with local governments that withhold or stretch out approval of projects without valid environmental grounds. In seven cases last year under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA),courts overturned municipal actions that rejected projects or delayed approvals. In all, the courts decided 46 cases under SEQRA in 2023. Where the government agency had decided that an environmental impact statement (EIS) was not needed, that choice was upheld in 23 cases and overturned in eight. Where an EIS had been prepared, the EIS was upheld in 11 and found inadequate in only one. The remaining three cases cannot be classified in this manner.
This annual review discusses the most important SEQRA decisions of 2023. All 46 will be included in the next annual update of “Environmental Impact Review in New York”.
But first, it should be noted that on June 18, 2024, the Court of Appeals issued its first SEQRA decision since 2017. Elizabeth Street Garden v.City of New York, 2024 Slip Op. 03321, aff’g 217A.D.3d 599, 192 N.Y.S.3d 102 (1st Dep’t 2023) concerned a proposed seven-story building with 123 units of affordable senior housing and at least 6,700 square feet of publicly accessible open space. The site, located in Manhattan’s Little Italy neighborhood, is owned by the city and since 2005 has been leased for use as a green space/sculpture garden. The Court of Appeals affirmed the negative declaration for the project — the determination that no EIS was needed — finding that the city had taken the requisite “hard look” at the project’s impacts, especially on open space. Judge Jenny Rivera wrote a lengthy dissent, arguing that there should be an EIS that looks more closely at the project’s impacts on open space and on the city’s efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change
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No full textPhoto of Eric Talley, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/beyond_unprecedented_podcast/1039/thumbnail.jp
Regulating Shipping of Carbon Dioxide for Sequestration
Get PDFA number of facilities intended for permanent sequestration of carbon dioxide are being developed in the United States. Several will be located on or near the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, making them easily accessible to ships. Meanwhile, in Europe there is substantial interest in capturing carbon dioxide from industrial operations, but currently inadequate sequestration facilities, and growing interest in shipping carbon dioxide for sequestration in the United States. This Article reviews the main U.S. federal laws applicable to transportation and geologic storage of carbon dioxide, including laws enacted to implement relevant international treaties. The Article also contextualizes its main findings in light of the National Environmental Policy Act’s application to projects involving transportation and related storage of carbon dioxide. Finally, it considers paradigmatic state laws on the topic, namely those from Louisiana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Texas
The End of Consent: Data and the Corporate-Consumer Relationship
Get PDFConsumer data is largely regulated through the notice-and-choice approach in the United States, which relies on consumer consent. The notice-and-choice approach is rooted in the control theory of information privacy. This paper will argue that the control theory is limited due to its reliance on property law, its breadth, as well as it reinforcing the ‘no privacy in public’ concept. Further, the notice-and-choice approach relies on consent being both free and informed. However, consent cannot be considered free due to the lack of choice and the manipulation exerted on the consumer. Also, consent is not informed as the consumer lacks adequate understanding of the privacy policies, as well as the consumer\u27s cognitive limitations. Additionally, the technological innovation: both the dissemination of data-tracking technology as well as the developments in data science — data collection, data analysis, and data aggregation have had serious implications on the role of consent. Namely, the conception of information must involve a contextual and de-abstracted notion. Contemporary data practices have allowed corporations to infer new data about the individual, and consequently construct a data double of the consumer. The data double is the digital mirroring of the consumer, which is developed through pervasive data tracking. While traditional corporate practices rely on the consumer to consensually divulge information, the corporation is now able to circumvent consent through inferring data from the data double. Therefore, corporations are able to circumvent consent by relying on inferred-generated data, made possible via algorithmic inferences and large-language models
The International Court of Justice: New Challenges in The Hague for Adjudication of Interstate Disputes
Get PDFThis panel was convened on Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 10:30 a.m. by its moderator Catherine Amirfar of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, who introduced the panelists: Sarah Cleveland of Columbia University Law School; and Juan Manuel Gómez-Robledo Verduzco, the Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations for Mexico
Screening for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems: Guidance and Tools for Government Officials
Get PDFStrong screening processes help to identify and avoid or mitigate risks associated with larger-scale investments in agriculture and food systems at the early stage of the investment assessment process before any commitment has been made, costs incurred, or harms suffered. This publication, Screening for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems: Guidance and Tools for Government Officials, seeks to unpack the “what, why, and how” of screening.
Governments are the gatekeepers to investments. They can, in consultation with stakeholders, decide which investors are allowed to conduct business in their country and what types of investments are permitted. This gatekeeping role is essential in a context where global experience of especially larger-scale, land-based investment has shown that not all investment necessarily leads to net beneficial outcomes. Some investments have had severe negative impacts on communities, society, and the environment and have led to substantial financial losses for investors, governments, or other affected stakeholders. And yet, larger-scale investment in agriculture and food systems has the potential to contribute to sustainable development – provided it is responsibly designed, regulated, and operated.
Investment screening is an important policy mechanism that governments can use in their role as gatekeepers to ensure that investment is responsible, essentially asking the questions: Do we want this particular investor to invest or operate in our country? Do we want this particular investment in our country?
Strong screening processes help to identify and avoid or mitigate risks associated with larger-scale investments in agriculture and food systems at the early stage of the investment assessment process before any commitment has been made, costs incurred, or harms suffered. They can also enable governments to identify and shape responsible projects, establish a country’s credibility as an investment destination with an effective enabling environment for responsible investment, establish good government–community–investor relationships, and lay the foundations for informed expectations and decisions about a proposed project
The Missing Half: Revisiting Monetary Remedies To Redress Racial Segregation
Get PDFThis Essay considers whether courts should have awarded monetary remedies in housing desegregation cases. By examining the relief awarded in public housing desegregation cases brought in United States federal courts between 1966 and 1994, this Essay reveals the limitations of the almost exclusive reliance on forward-looking integration relief as a remedy. The Essay argues that there is a “missing half” of remedies that courts never awarded: compensatory damages for the loss of wealth and opportunity caused by housing segregation. Forward-looking remedies that promised integration have often gone unfulfilled. Understanding these “missing” damages is crucial given recent Supreme Court rulings on race-conscious programs, as well as political and cultural debates about how to provide a remedy for the harms done by structural racism. The Essay encourages a greater focus on the role of monetary relief as compensation for racial harm going forward, while also urging that commentators and advocates move beyond calcified debates about integration versus equalization (or “place-based” approaches) as a remedy for housing segregation. As a legal and policy matter, redress for housing segregation should include a spectrum of remedies including individual compensatory damages, community-based compensation, and forward-looking injunctive relief. The Essay also has implications for the current discussions in the United States about how and whether to provide reparations for Black Americans. The Essay suggests that repair should include individual payments, given what we learn from the mixed success of injunctive relief remedies in litigation
The Oxford Handbook of the Law of Work
No full textAt the core of all societies and economies are human beings deploying their energies and talents in productive activities – that is, at work. The law governing human productive activity is a large part of what determines outcomes in terms of social justice, material wellbeing, and the sustainability of both. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that work is heavily regulated.
This Handbook examines the \u27law of work\u27, a term that includes legislation setting employment standards, collective labour law, workplace discrimination law, the law regulating the contract of employment, and international labour law. It covers the regulation of relations between employer and employee, as well as labour unions, but also discussions on the contested boundaries and efforts to expand the scope of some laws regulating work beyond the traditional boundaries.
Written by a team of experts in the field of labour law, the Handbook offers a comprehensive review and analysis, both theoretical and critical.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1392/thumbnail.jp
Comment on Part 4 Essays: Goodwin and Dailey and Rosenbury
Get PDFProfessors Michelle Goodwin and Anne Dailey and President Laura Rosenbury have written two compelling essays on Part 4 of the Restatement of Children and the Law, dealing with Children in Society. Goodwin’s essay, She’s So Exceptional: Rape and Incest Exceptions Post-Dobbs, focuses on § 19.02 of the Restatement, dealing with the right of minors to reproductive health treatments. This Section was approved by the American Law Institute before the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade. In her essay, Goodwin explores the harms that will follow if minors’ right of access to abortion, contraception, treatment for sexually transmitted infections and other care is cut off. Dailey and Rosenbury engage with §§ 18.10 and 18.11, dealing with minors’ right of free expression in their essay, Beyond Home and School. Building on arguments against strong parental authority they have developed in earlier work, they challenge the Restatement’s position recognizing parents’ authority to limit their children’s access to speech, focusing particularly on social media.
This Comment begins by briefly describing Part 4 of the Restatement, which includes diverse regulation dealing with the law’s direct relationship with children, not mediated (primarily) through the institutions most relevant to children’s experience — the family, the public school, and the justice system. It then reviews the two essays on Part 4, turning first to Goodwin’s essay and then to Dailey and Rosenbury’s essay. Finally, I suggest that the two essays, while they address very different legal issues, are in conversation with one another. Goodwin’s essay is a cautionary tale on the risk of giving the state (and particularly the political branches) greater authority to decide what is harmful to children, as Dailey and Rosenbury’s proposal would seem to do