In The News

How a Local Garden’s Fight Touched a ‘Generation’ of Lawyers, Law360 https://www.law360.com/pulse/new-york-pulse/articles/1827575/how-a-local-garden-s-fight-touched-generations-of-attys (Apr. 19, 2024)

You’re Saying It Wrong, PIX11 https://pix11.com/news/local-news/youre-saying-it-wrong-new-york-city-street-names/ (Mar. 14, 2024)

Judge to Developer: Lay off Children’s Magical Garden—and Protect Its Mulberry Tree Too, The Village Sun https://thevillagesun.com/judge-to-developer-lay-off-childrens-magical-garden-and-protect-its-mulberry-tree-too (Oct. 5, 2023)

Naming Gotham, 99WBOB The Rotunda http://www.990wbob.com/past-casts/the-rotunda-naming-gotham (Aug. 16, 2023)

Skepticism Builds About City Hall Push for Giant Cricket Stadium in the Bronx, The City https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/7/26/23807825/t20-world-cup-cricket-van-cortlandt-park (July 26, 2023)

Why the Montana Climate Kids Can’t Lose, HeatMap https://heatmap.news/politics/held-v-montana-climate-kids (Jun. 23, 2023)

A Bellweather Climate Case in Montana, Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-bellwether-climate-case-in-montana-seeks-more-action-under-state-constitution-88847825 (Jun. 11, 2023)

Did NY Leaders Leave Residents Unprepared for the Air Quality Crisis? New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/nyregion/adams-hochul-response-air-quality.html (Jun. 9, 2023)

New York “Smoke Wave” Response Time Criticized, ABC News https://abcnews.go.com/US/new-york-citys-smoke-wave-response-time-warnings/story?id=99914653 (Jun. 7, 2023)

Nature for All: Disrupting Structural Inequality in the Provision of Nature and Its Benefits to People, The Nature of Cities Roundtable (Nov. 28, 2022) https://www.thenatureofcities.com/2022/11/25/nature-for-all-how-can-we-uproot-structural-inequity-in-the-provision-of-nature-and-its-benefits-to-people/

Legislating Environmental Justice: Lessons Learned from New York Clean Law podcast (with Prof. Rebecca Bratspies and Hannah Perls) https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/2022/10/cleanlaw-legislating-environmental-justice-in-new-york-with-prof-rebecca-bratspies-and-hannah-perls/ (October 2022)

Ari Ephriam Feldman, There Are Four Ballot Measures Facing New York City This General Election, NY1 (October 19, 2022) https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2022/10/18/your-guide-to-the-four-ballot-measures-facing-new-yorkers-in-2022

Environmental Racism and the Jackson Water Crisis, Mike Gilliam: Let It Rip, CUNY TV (October 4, 2022) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VOT7DA0n1A

Isabella Borshoff, Seed Savior? The Wire China (September 25, 2022) https://www.thewirechina.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Seed-Savior.pdf

Katie Honan and Samantha Maldonado, For Ida-Flooded Denied City Payouts, Legal Options and Political Promises, The City (August 18, 2022) https://www.thecity.nyc/housing/2022/8/18/23312387/ida-flooded-homeowners-denied-city-payouts-get-legal-options-and-political-promises

Umair Irfan and Neil Dhanesha, The Supreme Court’s EPA Ruling Isn’t The Only Legal Attack on the Environment, Vox (June 30, 2022) https://www.vox.com/23181832/supreme-court-epa-west-virginia-climate-regulation

New Yorkers Environmental Rights Are Under Attack (with Prof. Katy Kuh) Bloomberg Insights (June 24, 2022) https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/new-yorkers-environmental-rights-are-under-attack

Environmental Law Toward Sustainability Targets (with multiple co-authors) OneEarth (June 15, 2022)

No Sacrifice Zones in Research Either!  SPARK magazine (June 5, 2022) (lead author) https://medium.com/national-center-for-institutional-diversity/no-sacrifice-zones-in-research-either-e41321520f3b

Robin Braveneder, Biden’s CEQ Has a Stephen Miller Problem, E&E News (April 20, 2022) https://www.eenews.net/articles/bidens-ceq-has-a-stephen-miller-problem/

The Renewable Rikers Prison Reclamation Project, Chaire Normandie pour la paix Good News Stories (November 2021) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEqe-Dd8XX8

Rikers Island Could Become Renewable Energy Hub, Yale Climate Connection (September 27, 2021) https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/09/rikers-island-could-become-renewable-energy-hub/

Sean Reilly, Trump’s Cost-Benefit Rule Under Fire As EPA Mulls Revamp, E&E News (June 9, 2021) https://www.eenews.net/articles/trumps-cost-benefit-rule-under-fire-as-epa-mulls-revamp/

Mayor Signs Off On Plan That Could Turn Rikers Jail Into Green Garrison, Real Estate Weekly (February 25, 2021) https://rew-online.com/mayor-signs-off-on-plan-that-could-turn-rikers-jail-into-green-garrison/

Recent Scholarship

(All Law Review Articles and Book Chapters can be downloaded here from SSRN)

Administering Environmental Rights, 41 Pace Envtl L. Rev. 100 (2024)

Energy Justice and Renewable Rikers, 78 Miami L. Rev. 347 (2024)

Underburdened Communities, 110 California L. Rev. 101 (2022)

What Makes It a Just Transition? Lessons from Renewable Rikers, 40 Pace Env. L. Rev. 1 (2023)

This Great Catastrophe: Bungling Pandemics from 1918 to Today, 30 Mich. St. Int’l L. Rev. 1 (2022)

Decarceration with Decarbonization: Renewable Rikers and the Transition to Clean Power, 13 San Diego J. Climate & Energy L. 1 (2022)

In Countless Ways and On an Unprecedented Scale: Reflections on the Stockholm Declaration at 50, 50 Georgia. J. Int’l and Comp. L. 754 (2022)

Renewable Rikers: A Plan for Restorative Climate Justice, 66 Loyola L. Rev. 371 (2021)

Seeing New York City’s Urban Canopy as a Commons: a View from the Street, in Cambridge Handbook on Innovation in Commons Research (2021)

Our Climate Moment is Now! (Or How to Change the Story and Save Our World, in Environmental Law Disrupted (ELI 2021)

Environmental Justice, Sustainable Development, and the Fight to Shut the Poletti Power Plant, in Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development: Intersections and Critical Perspectives (2021)

Global Plastic Pollution: Curbing Single-Use Plastic Production (with Anastasia Telesetsky) in International Handbook of Environmental Law (2020)

Territory is Everything: Afro-Colombian Communities, Human Rights and Illegal Land Grabs, Colombia Human Rts L. Rev. (2020).

The Human Right to Environmental Information, in The Encyclopedia of Human Rights and the Environment (2019)(with Sarah Lamdan). 

Mayah’s Lot: Using Comic books to Teach Environmental Justice, in Teaching Law with Pop Culture (2019)

The Trump Administration Versus the Administrative State, 94 Chicago Kent L. Rev. 101 (2019)

Shutting Down Poletti: Human Rights Lessons from Environmental Victories, 36 Wisconsin J. Int’l L. 247 (2019)

Cryptocurrency and the Myth of the Trustless Transaction, 25 Michigan Tech. L. Rev. 1 (2018)

Corrupt at its Core: How Law Failed the Victims of Waste Dumping in Cote d’Ivoire, 43 Columbia J. Env’tl L. 417 (2018)

Reasoning Up: From Customary Law to the Human Right to a Healthy Environment, in The Right to a Healthy Environment in International Law (Cambridge University Press 2018)

Recent Blog Posts

Nature for All: How Can We Uproot Structural Inequity In The Provision of Nature and Its Benefits To People? (Roundtable with multiple authors) Nature of Cities (November 25, 2022) https://www.thenatureofcities.com/2022/11/25/nature-for-all-how-can-we-uproot-structural-inequity-in-the-provision-of-nature-and-its-benefits-to-people/

New Yorker’s Environmental Rights Are Under Attack (with Katherine Kuh) Bloomberg Law (June 24, 2022) https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/new-yorkers-environmental-rights-are-under-attack

No Sacrifice Zones in Research Either!  SPARK magazine (June 5, 2022) (lead author) https://medium.com/national-center-for-institutional-diversity/no-sacrifice-zones-in-research-either-e41321520f3b

This Changes Everything: New York’s Environmental Amendment, Nature of Cities (February 25, 2022) https://www.law.cuny.edu/blog/2022/02/25/this-changes-everything-new-yorks-environmental-amendment/.

Building Environmental Justice in New York City, CPR Blog (August 23, 2021) https://cpr-new-2020.herokuapp.com/cpr-blog/building-environmental-justice-nyc/

Will the Biden Administration Invest in Environmental Justice Reforms? (with Dariya Minovi)CPR Blog (December 9, 2020) https://cpr-new-2020.herokuapp.com/cpr-blog/will-biden-administration-invest-environmental-justice-reforms/

Struggling to Breathe: Asthma, Pollution, and The Fight For Environmental Justice, Data For Progress (December 3, 2020) https://www.dataforprogress.org/memos/struggling-to-breathe.

Environmental Justice Is Not UnAmerican, CPR Blog (September 21, 2020)

Decolonizing Chadha, Yale Journal on Regulation (July 28, 2020)

Trail Smelter Arbitration Offers Little Guidance for Covid-19 Suits Against China, Just Security (July 14, 2020)

We All Count! The 2020 Census In The Era Of Covid-19, Yale Journal on Regulation (April 5, 2020)

Renewable Rikers As a Blueprint For A Sustainable City, Nature of Cities (March 11, 2020)