In 2017, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that culverts installed by the state of Washington which reduce the habitat of treaty-protected salmon violate the treaty rights of Tribes in western Washington. That decision—part of the long-running United States v. Washington litigation—has since become known as the “Culverts Case.” Broadly, that decision essentially holds that habitat protection is a component of treaty-protected rights to hunt, fish, and gather. This Article analyzes what habitat protection as a treaty right would mean for the water-based, treaty-protected resources—such as fish and manoomin (wild rice)—of the Anishinaabe Tribes in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. This Article describes relevant treaties to determine what water-based resources those Tribes have treaty rights to, and analyzes relevant precedent that defines or limits the exercise or scope of those rights in state and federal courts. Through interviews with individuals who work with Tribes on issues pertaining to usufructuary rights, this Article identifies specific environmental threats to water-based treaty resources throughout the Great Lakes region. By analogizing those identified threats to the culverts at issue in United States v. Washington, this Article examines what habitat protection as a treaty right would mean in Anishinaabe Akiing.

Clothing is one of life’s necessities. Fashion—the prevailing style of clothing of a particular time—offers an important medium through which people from all walks of life can express themselves through personal style.1 While the garments we put on our back may be an indispensable part of daily life, many take for granted where they come from and how they entered their wardrobe. The fashion industry, for all its merits, takes a major toll on resource use and has broad environmental impacts. From cultivation of fibers that will later become textiles, to dyeing processes, to consumption, the clothes we wear impact our environment at every step. The emergence of the “fast fashion” industry—the rapid production of inexpensive clothing to mimic the ever-changing trends of high-fashion labels—has exacerbated these effects. Popular retailers like H&M and Zara have a wide global reach. Although these retailers made explicit commitments to responsible use and production with in-store textile recycling and rewards programs, the actual value of these efforts is less clear. In contrast, other retailers like The Reformation and Everlane founded their brands on the tenets of sustainable fashion. This note acknowledges the difficulty of defining “sustainable fashion” and recognizes that its overuse in general discourse has perhaps rendered the term meaningless; marketing and advertising campaigns have flung the term around with abandon and it has become more of a marketing ploy instead of an important standard. However, in an attempt to give this phrase meaning in the context of this discussion, “sustainable fashion” is defined as a system of clothing production and consumption that assesses and attempts to meaningfully reduce the impact of each stage of a garments life, from the production of the fibers to its disposal. Sustainable fashion seeks to minimize and reduce consumption of resources at all stages and can be done through forgoing use, recycling, and repurposing so as not to compromise the availability of such resources for future generations, However, with these commitments to alternative materials, limited production, and longerlasting clothing comes higher costs and inaccessibility to consumers. While others have suggested that simply allowing the industry to regulate itself by promoting self-imposed labelling and encouraging consumers to change their shopping habits will correct the negative environmental impacts from the fashion industry, this paper proposes that more is needed. This note suggests that using existing legal frameworks for the imposition of international trade policies to disincentivize consumption of fast fashion and to incentive limited consumption of responsiblymade clothing is the quickest and easiest method to solve the multi-faceted problems of the fast ffashion industry.

Neoliberalism is a nebulous concept and one that is often hard to define. It has been the ruling political and economic ideology of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In this note, I will define neoliberalism, examine neoliberal environmental management, and a newer wrinkle to neoliberalism — “green” neoliberalism. I will then examine the effects, mostly negative, that neoliberal environmental management and green neoliberalism has had on workers, property rights of natural resources, and combating environmental degradation and catastrophic climate change through multiple case studies.

The criminal justice system is inefficient, ineffective, and fraught with laws and policies disparately impacting people of color and low-income individuals. There is no singular solution to crime, and the current system does not go far enough. If we are to achieve the goals set out by the criminal justice system of enhancing public safety and reducing crime, then we must resolve the root issues contributing to crime through other bodies of law and alternative mechanisms. This paper will analyze how criminal law ends may be achieved through environmental means; specifically, how the addition of green spaces in urban communities can reduce crime and improve communities. This paper argues that crime reduction and prevention goals can be achieved by using zoning law to create more green spaces in urban communities because communities with accessible green space experience lower rates of crime and an increase in community well-being and prosperity. Given that low-income individuals and people of color lack comparable access to green space and are most adversely affected by the criminal justice system compared to their White and more affluent counterparts, the addition of green spaces in these communities may help correct racial and economic injustices while improving the areas in which they live.

Since 2017, in response to the nonviolent protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, more than a dozen states across the country adopted legislation limiting citizens’ ability to protest against fossil fuel infrastructure projects through means ranging from increased penalties for trespassing to allowing state officials to prohibit public gatherings. Widespread protests and civil unrest during the summer of 2020 in response to racial injustice prompted states across the country to adopt legislation expanding the definitions of terms like “riot” and “unlawful gathering” and providing increased penalties for acts of protest. This comment analyzes three representative statutes from Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Tennessee using a constitutional framework to consider the impacts of these statutes on First Amendment rights, including speech, assembly, and association.