human rights

Seeking Salvation at the COP

Guest post by Sunjana Supekar, UCLA Law student

“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”  These words, attributed to famed anti-racist activist Angela Davis, permeated my thoughts as I walked through the halls of the 2017 UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany (referred to as the “COP,” for conference of parties). The major question for this year’s …

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Environmental Protection and the Rule of Law

A Report from the Second Inter-American Congress on Environmental Rule of Law

I am back from attending the Second Inter-American Congress on Environmental Rule of Law, hosted by the Supreme Court of Chile in Santiago and planned by the Organization of American States, UN Environment, IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law, and other partners. For the past five years since the 2012 Rio+20 conference (20 years after the …

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Student Guest Blogger Terra Laughton: Perspectives on COP21

Terra Laughton, UCLA School of Law JD class of 2017, shares her perspective on attending the Paris climate negotiations

I am a second-year student at UCLA School of Law. I recently returned from two weeks in Paris attending COP21. My classmates and I had already boarded our plane at Charles De Gaulle when the Paris Agreement was officially adopted—we learned of the news upon landing in Los Angeles. While it would have been exhilarating …

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To See What Is In Front Of One’s Nose…

“… is a constant struggle.” — George Orwell. In my post a couple of days ago, I neglected to mention one huge issue before the Supreme Court in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum.  Although the Court originally granted cert on the issue of corporate liability, the Supremes kicked it back last February for reargument this …

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Should Environmental Lawyers Care about the Alien Tort Statute?

The Supreme Court term tomorrow opens with a bang: Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, which has assumed very large significance in the international human rights community.  But should Legal Planet readers care?  I think that they should. The plaintiffs in Kiobel allege that Royal Dutch Petroleum (better known in the United States as Shell Oil) …

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Climate Change and International Human Rights Law

A report released today by the International Human Rights Law Clinic and the Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law and the Center for Law & Global Justice at the University of San Francisco School of Law finds that climate change policies may unintentionally increase …

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