This article by Sandra Postel appeared on the Post Carbon Institute's website, March 28, 2018. Do rivers have a right to water? As dams and diversions deplete flows, it’s a question environmental advocates and legal scholars are asking more and more. Over the last decade, rivers in Ecuador and New Zealand have won legal rights, and [...]
This guest comment by Ann Kneeland appeared in The Register-Guard, March 28th, 2018. On March 7, Circuit Court Judge Karsten Rasmussen ruled to keep the Freedom from Aerial Spraying of Herbicides Bill of Rights Charter Amendment off the ballot in Lane County. The judge’s decision is yet another canary in the coal mine singing out that, under [...]
Florida's failure to ban assault weapons has angered some local officials, but they have few options for recourse. Some are taking the issue to voters, while others are challenging a state law that bans cities from passing gun laws. This article by Natalie Delgadillo appeared in Governing, March 20th, 2018. After the mass shooting in [...]
Blocks Youngstown Drinking Water Protection Initiative from May ballot; community turns to Ohio Supreme Court A Press Release from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, from March 19, 2018. YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO: For the second time in six months, the Mahoning County Board of Elections (BOE) unanimously blocked Youngstown residents from voting on a duly qualified citizen [...]
City Council approved 'Climate Bill' last year without controversial provision This article by Anthony Hahn appeared in the Daily Camera, March 19th, 2018. Lafayette's City Council this week will discuss amending the Climate Bill of Rights and Protections — a piece of city code adopted last year that supporters say effectively bans oil and gas [...]
A Blog Posting by Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin and Tish O'Dell of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, from March 14th, 2018. When does the right to own a gun carry more cultural and legal weight than the right of a community to collectively decide what safety means and how to create protected, healthy, and resilient communities? That is a [...]
This article by Elon Glucklich appeared in The Register-Guard, March 9th, 2108. A proposed ballot measure to ban the aerial spraying of herbicides across Lane County can’t proceed to a vote because it is too broadly written, a Lane County Circuit Court judge has ruled. The ruling by Judge Karsten Rasmussen on Wednesday said the [...]
For decades, women have been fighting for an equal rights amendment. Gun owners, mostly men, have had the Second Amendment for centuries. This article by Emily Peck appeared in the Huffington Post, March 7th, 2018. Here’s a disturbing fact to consider in 2018, the year women supposedly began to topple the patriarchy: Gun owners in [...]
How a farcical series of events in the 1880s produced an enduring and controversial legal precedent This article by Adam Winkler appeared in The Atlantic magazine, March 5th, 2018. Somewhat unintuitively, American corporations today enjoy many of the same rights as American citizens. Both, for instance, are entitled to the freedom of speech and the [...]
'You don't have an oil and gas problem; you have a democracy problem' This article by Anthony Hahn appeared in the Daily Camera, March 5th, 2018. Calls for an outright fracking ban took center stage at a community forum with representatives of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund on Monday night — a meeting heralded [...]
