ABSTRACT
Fifty years after the rise of modern environmental law and its robust enforcement regime, there persists a disproportionate distribution of environmental burdens in the United States. Many underserved communities suffer from legacy pollution, sighting of undesirable land uses, failing infrastructure, and attendant epidemiological and ecological harms. The environmental justice movement responds to these inequities and is receiving unprecedented focus in the Biden Administration. Communities, politicians, and attorneys are crafting legal and policy mechanisms to achieve environmental justice goals. However, there are presently tools that advocates can and should deploy in service of complete justice in environmental enforcement.
This Article advances a type of non-statutory, equitable relief called mitigation to provide redress to communities harmed by violations of environmental laws. Mitigation is restorative relief: it offsets or remedies harm from past violations of law …
Colangelo, Sara, Forging Complete Justice: Equitable Relief in Environmental Enforcement (Draft) (2022). Harvard Environmental Law Review, volume 46, no 2, 2022 (forthcoming).
First posted 2022-04-22 16:45:38
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