Date of Submission
Spring 2022
Academic Program
Sociology
Project Advisor 1
Lauraleen Ford
Abstract/Artist's Statement
What is, has been, and could be the role of litigation in the U.S. environmental justice movement? To what ends do Indigenous communities, federally-recognized tribes, and rural Black communities choose to engage with the U.S. legal system, an institution which has, over history, consistently subjugated and dispossessed them? How do these groups' particularistic relationships to natural and built environments, conceptions of justice and fairness, and understandings of what effective environmental regulation look like inform that choice? This paper draws from in-depth qualitative research to demonstrate the following things: (1) how environmental justice lawsuits differ from canonical environmental and civil rights litigation on the basis of balancing rhetorical and social-equity based claims with strictly-legal arguments, (2) the way in which litigation serves as a key mechanism through which environmental justice constituencies can gain more accountability from government agencies and participate more fully in environmental decision making, and (3), how the processes and secondary effects of litigation can act as sites of movement building and cross-organization collaboration, and mechanisms through which to educate the broader public on environmental justice considerations. Finally, I posit a theory of litigation which suggests that engagement with the legitimacy of the legal system and the compelling nature of litigation within regulatory settings can constitute a more integrational–rather than assimilative–incorporation of environmental justice constituencies into American civil society.
Open Access Agreement
Open Access
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Forman, Tomas Sebastian, "Litigation as Integration and Participation: The Role of Lawsuits in the U.S. Environmental Justice Movement" (2022). Senior Projects Spring 2022. 145.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2022/145
This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.
Included in
Administrative Law Commons, Agriculture Law Commons, Civic and Community Engagement Commons, Civil Procedure Commons, Common Law Commons, Community-Based Research Commons, Courts Commons, Demography, Population, and Ecology Commons, Environmental Law Commons, Environmental Studies Commons, Fourteenth Amendment Commons, Housing Law Commons, Indigenous, Indian, and Aboriginal Law Commons, Indigenous Studies Commons, Judges Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, Land Use Law Commons, Law and Race Commons, Law and Society Commons, Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons, Legal Profession Commons, Legal Studies Commons, Litigation Commons, Place and Environment Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, Torts Commons, Urban Studies and Planning Commons, Water Law Commons, Work, Economy and Organizations Commons