Taking a Stand: Climate Change Litigants and the Viability of Constitutional Claims

In response to the accelerating effects of global warming, individuals and citizen groups in the United States have brought suit against the federal government to challenge the adequacy of existing climate change policies. Though statutory and tort claims comprise the bulk of these actions, plaintiffs have begun alleging that government inaction on climate change violates constitutional and fundamental rights. In these matters, the federal judiciary generally applies threshold justiciability doctrines, such as standing and the political question doctrine, to deny judicial review. This Note examines the reasoning behind the judiciary’s application of these doctrines and evaluates the appropriate scope of judicial engagement in climate change litigation, arguing that broad invocation of these doctrines undermines the judiciary’s role of protecting citizens’ constitutional rights. It also argues for the recognition of the fundamental right to a stable climate implicit in the Constitution. The recent case of Juliana v. United States is as an illustrative example of the opportunities and difficulties inherent in climate change lawsuits

The Fiction of the Fabricated Ruin: Memory and History in the Work of Adrián Villar Rojas

The sculptural practice of Adrián Villar Rojas (b. 1980, Argentina) threatens to fissure the continuous façade of our reality through its uncanny insinuation of parallel temporalities. His construction of monumental ruins amalgamates disparate forms ranging from the organic to the aggressively industrial, and his large-scale works are rendered more enigmatic due to their calculated destruction. His use of unfired clay produces a decaying aesthetic that alludes to the fragility of narratives traditionally imbued in monumental forms, thereby calling attention to the tenuous nature of memory and history. By producing works abroad that are intentionally oscillatory and endowing them with familial, and often morbid, titles (ie. My Dead Family; The Murder of Your Heritage; Before My Birth), the artist alludes to the pervasive ambiguities in Argentina’s political atmosphere that perpetuate the elusive nature of its recent historical past. Regardless of his active participation within an international circuit of contemporary art, Villar Rojas’ enigmatic and ruinous aesthetic remains driven by his latent historical inheritance

Taking a Stand: Climate Change Litigants and the Viability of Constitutional Claims

In response to the accelerating effects of global warming, individuals and citizen groups in the United States have brought suit against the federal government to challenge the adequacy of existing climate change policies. Though statutory and tort claims comprise the bulk of these actions, plaintiffs have begun alleging that government inaction on climate change violates constitutional and fundamental rights. In these matters, the federal judiciary generally applies threshold justiciability doctrines, such as standing and the political question doctrine, to deny judicial review. This Note examines the reasoning behind the judiciary’s application of these doctrines and evaluates the appropriate scope of judicial engagement in climate change litigation, arguing that broad invocation of these doctrines undermines the judiciary’s role of protecting citizens’ constitutional rights. It also argues for the recognition of the fundamental right to a stable climate implicit in the Constitution. The recent case of Juliana v. United States is as an illustrative example of the opportunities and difficulties inherent in climate change lawsuits

"Concededly Loyal": Mitsuye Endo and the Continuing Significance of Ex parte Endo

Ex parte Endo involves issues ranging from the constitutionality of detaining citizens during wartime, judicial avoidance in cases alleging fundamental rights violations, the selectively porous barrier between the judicial and executive branches, the evaluation of a citizen’s loyalty, and the implication of disloyalty due to one’s ancestry—in short, questions of enduring social and legal import that demand further and engaged study with the case and the woman who made it possible. This Article argues that Ex parte Endo and the petitioner at its center merit greater attention and recognition in both legal and cultural discourse