This short essay for the Environmental Law Collaborative explores law's role in framing discussions of sustainability. It suggests that we need to think of sustainability not as a set of practices but as set of organizing principles by which to restructure the core, yet largely invisible...

True cryptocurrency believers posit a world with virtually limitless applications for the block chain. They tout the prospect of a globally accepted currency that works with lightning speed, costs virtually nothing, and guarantees 100% security and anonymity while eliminating the need to trust...

These remarks delivered at the 2008 ASIL meeting, critique the notion of progress as it is deployed in discussion of international law. Drawing on human rights and environmental law, this brief essay describes the disconnect between progress in enacting international law and progress in...

In examining how badly the United States bungled its COVID-19 pandemic response, it is worth going back to the commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the 1918 flu pandemic. Author after author cautioned that the next pandemic would overwhelm the United States health system and that the...

Waste is built into modern culture. Yet the problem of what to do with all that waste remains unresolved. The Western over-consumptive lifestyle relies on the highly racialized transfer of the burdens associated with managing waste away from certain communities and onto others. Indeed, our...

At the same time that the world was rocked by climate-related unnatural disasters, the social unrest sparked by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin forced a long-overdue racial reckoning with regard to over-policing, mass incarceration, and other...

Agricultural companies are merging at a remarkable rate. The ensuing ag-biotech behemoths will have unprecedented control over global food production. The companies claim that this industry consolidation will not only benefit shareholders, but will serve the public by promoting food security and...

Learning from BP's disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico means understanding why extraction technology innovations flourished while cleanup and prevention technologies stagnated. Only then can we fruitfully identify the kinds of changes to the governance regime that might prevent this sort...