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The ESG Disclosure Paradox: Gaps in Environmental Justice Criteria
No full textEnvironmental Justice (“EJ”) and Environmental Social Governance (“ESG”) are terms used to address the impacts of corporate actions as well as environmental and social regulation on the people and the planet. ESG disclosure is a corporate-driven invention that aims to measure progress towards sustainability and disclose environmental and social criteria while fostering value for businesses. EJ, by contrast, emerged as a social movement that evolved into regulatory frameworks. Governmental agencies and EJ advocates are utilizing EJ mapping tools and metrics to assess inequalities in environmental impacts caused by private and public policy and decision-making. Though these concepts may initially create an impression of contradiction, the paradoxical relationship between using EJ tools within ESG disclosure frameworks creates innovative avenues to achieve long-term corporate viability while pursuing EJ objectives.
ESG disclosure requirements can be imposed through mandatory rules by public regulators or adopted voluntarily by businesses. In the U.S., environmental protections in general, and disclosure regulations in particular, remain uncertain, with ongoing political turmoil and a push-pull dynamic surrounding the establishment of mandatory ESG requirements and EJ programs. Given this uncertainty, voluntary frameworks warrant closer examination, as they offer immediate insights into corporate environmental and social disclosures. Additionally, voluntary reporting frameworks serve as models that influence the development of mandatory ESG regulations.
This Article evaluates and critically examines the inclusion of EJ in voluntary ESG disclosure frameworks and identifies the gaps in existing frameworks for the effective inclusion of environmental justice criteria. Thus, this work intends to provide ideas and tools to guide businesses incorporating EJ into ESG, inform public regulators (increasingly relying on private frameworks to create mandatory ESG disclosure), and support EJ advocates in navigating the complexities of ESG disclosure
Private Money: Stablecoins, Bitcoin, and the GENIUS Act
No full textCryptocurrency has been legalized in the United States. The 2025 GENIUS Act provides a sensible regulatory framework for cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange while avoiding predicted monetary chaos. The Act correctly distinguishes between volatile fiat cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which are unsuitable as payment mechanisms, and stablecoins backed by traditional currencies and reserves.
Historical analysis spanning American monetary systems from the “free banking era” before 1860 through modern digital payments demonstrates that private money has long coexisted with government currency but requires appropriate regulation to prevent bank runs, fraud, and monetary instability. The GENIUS Act addresses key cryptocurrency risks—technological failures, volatility, issuer fraud, and loss of monetary control—through one-to-one reserve requirements, business activity restrictions, supervisory oversight, and priority for stablecoin holders in bankruptcy proceedings.
Critics argue the Act enables monetary chaos, lacks consumer protections, and permits “Big Tech” to control money supply. These criticisms are largely unfounded. The Act’s reserve requirements prevent fractional banking and money supply disruption, while existing corporate governance and consumer protection mechanisms provide adequate safeguards.
The GENIUS Act represents neither a return to nineteenth-century monetary chaos nor abandonment of oversight, but rather a measured approach distinguishing payment uses from investment uses of cryptocurrency. Success ultimately depends on whether stablecoins can satisfy the “no-questions-asked” principle and offer competitive transaction costs compared to existing payment systems like credit cards and digital wallets
The Mono Basin Project: Remedying Environmental Injustice Through Tribal Beneficial Use Designations
No full textDue to a history of violence, dispossession, and racism, Native American tribes in California face structural disadvantages and inequities with respect to water rights. At the same time, tribes lack meaningful legal remedies to gain access to the water resources necessary to maintain their ways of life. One key issue is that California water agencies traditionally did not consider tribal water uses when implementing water quality control laws, leaving such uses unprotected. For years, tribes have urged the State to fill in these gaps in the law by adopting tribal beneficial uses (“TBUs”), which would protect tribal water uses, such as subsistence and cultural uses, through heightened water quality objectives. In recent years, state agencies have taken initial steps toward implementing TBUs in response to this advocacy.
This Article examines the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board’s Mono Basin Project, one of the state’s first TBU implementation projects. Mono Lake, home of Native tribes like the Kootzaduka’a since time immemorial, has long been at the center of an intense debate about balancing the protection of tribal water uses against the need to divert water to the state’s more densely populated and water-scarce regions. Since the mid-1900s, diversions from the Mono Basin to Los Angeles have substantially lowered Mono Lake’s water level, leading to adverse ecological impacts and threatening the ability of the Kootzaduka’a people to maintain their traditional subsistence and cultural practices.
As one of the earliest TBU projects in California, the Mono Basin Project can provide crucial insight into both the benefits and potential shortfalls of TBUs as a mechanism for protecting tribal water uses. This Article argues that despite the Mono Basin Project’s apparent procedural justice, the project reveals key limitations to using water quality law as the primary mechanism for addressing inequities faced by tribes with respect to water. First, the project raises the issue of constraints imposed by water rights, which commonly conflict with water quality control implementation and, in the Mono Basin context, may significantly limit the effectiveness of TBUs at increasing Mono Lake’s elevation. Second, at a broader, statewide level, the slowness of the TBU process thus far raises concerns about the effectiveness of the state’s current TBU regime. The Article argues that to secure needed protections for tribes within a meaningful timeframe, the current discretionary system should be replaced by a statutory directive for TBU implementation