Law Review Articles
With a Master's Degree in international business and communications from a global top 100 research university in her native Denmark, a JD from the University of Oregon School of Law (she was number one in her law school class), a PhD in political science on the way, and many years of professional legal writing and research, Professor Dellinger is eloquent, precise and prolific. Thoroughly researched and cited, each of these articles could be a full PhD dissertation in many contexts. Her law review articles are thought provoking, in-depth, yet linguistically approachable by both legal scholars and laypeople alike.
Carbon Taxation for Climate Change Mitigation
The “public bad” that is carbon pollution must be taxed and otherwise regulated into discontinuation since other steps have not yet solved climate change and may not. This article demonstrates that with the right amount of voter support, which exists, carbon taxation can be implemented in a progressive manner that ends up with the significant side benefit of alleviating poverty at the national or global levels. Thus, a “universal basic income” can be created through revenue recycling either within each jurisdiction or, with more buy-in than what is currently likely to be the case, at the global level at a later point in time. To be effective, a carbon tax would have to start imminently and potentially at levels between…
Airline Bailouts and Climate Change Re-Regulation
COVID-19 is wreaking havoc around the world and is likely to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. The virus virtually brought airline travel around the world to a standstill soon after it broke out. In the United States, the airline industry was quick to ask for, and get, a sizeable bailout from the U.S. Senate. But the other global killer that has unfortunately taken a back seat to the coronavirus pandemic remains climate change. The traditional debate between “a decade or so” (per IPCC) and “very soon” to curb climate change is largely irrelevant; we know that we have to act expeditiously to avoid potentially disastrous climate change. All industries, sectors, and nations play a role in this. That includes the American airline industry as well. This article proceeds as follows. The airline industry’s…
Electric Utility Wildfire Liability Reform in California
As climate change worsens, so does the risk of wildfires. This is especially so in already hot, dry areas such as the western United States. Adding to this problem is the rapid growth of the wildland-urban interface (WUI). As more and more houses are built in the WUI, wildfires will pose an even greater risk to lives and homes, they will be harder to fight, and letting natural fires burn will become impossible. This article argues that end-consumers who live in the WUI should, to a much greater extent than is currently the case, internalize the full costs of their choices and actions under principles of environmental justice and other notions of fairness in law and policymaking. Published in Environmental…
Post-Jesner Climate Change Lawsuits Under the Alien Tort Statute
Climate change is as vexing a problem as ever. Around the world, plaintiffs are taking steps to fight climate change through lawsuits against both governments and corporate entities, among other steps. At times, such lawsuits may seem somewhat tenuous, but litigation spurs progress. Actions to stem the dangers of climate change need to be taken on many fronts and in many stages without deterrence from the enormity of the task. This article analyzes whether the 1789 Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) is a realistic mechanism to provide redress for climate change-related international human rights violations and related violations of international environmental law by American corporations, which have continued their climate-changing activities in the United States and elsewhere decades after becoming aware…
Trophy Hunting — A Relic of the Past
It seems so obvious: you don’t save rare animals by shooting them. Yet, trophy hunters stubbornly argue that this is just the case. They claim that their hunts help raise awareness about species extinction and that the money they pay for the hunts helps conservation efforts and contributes to local economies. Conservationists point out that these arguments are not based on solid proof and that trophy hunting – the killing of big game for taxidermied body parts or photos with the killed animal, typically in Africa – fails to account for the fact that rare animals have a much higher value alive than dead, not to mention the interest by virtually everyone in safeguarding the species for the long run.…
Rethinking Force Majeure in Public International Law
Climate change is one of today’s most significant and complex problems. The number and level of severity of extreme weather events is increasing rapidly around the world. One year after the next, we learn that heat records have been broken once again. Climate change has been traced to a wide range of severe problems around the world, ranging from the obvious damage caused by hurricanes, floods, extreme rainfall, prolonged droughts, wildfires and a host of other weather-related issues to the perhaps less obvious such as physical and mental illnesses, “civil unrest, riots, mass migrations and perhaps wars caused by water and food shortages.” “It is no longer rationally debatable that climate change will take a huge toll on human health…
An ‘Act of God’? Rethinking Contractual Impracticability in an Era of Anthropogenic Climate Change
“Extreme” weather has become the new normal. What were previously considered to be inexplicable and unpredictable “acts of God” can no longer reasonably be said to be so. They are acts of man. The established doctrine of contractual impracticability rests on the notion that a party may be exculpated from contractual liability if supervening events have rendered a performance impracticable unless the party has implicitly or explicitly assumed the risk of the event. To a large extent, courts still consider the foreseeability of the event and an affected party’s ability to control it. However, it makes little logical or legal sense to continue to allow parties to escape liability for weather events that are in fact highly foreseeable given today’s…
Trophy Hunting Contracts: Unenforceable for Reasons of Public Policy
In “trophy hunting” agreements, wealthy individuals, typically from the Global North, pay locals such as guides or landowners, typically in the Global South, to assist with the planned hunt of rare — if not outright threatened or endangered — species such as lions, polar bears, black rhinoceroses, and giraffes for a fee as a private contractual arrangement. A well-known example is the kill of “Cecil the Lion” in the summer of 2015. American dentist Walter Palmer paid local Zimbabweans $55,000 for their assistance. In other cases, hunters have obtained government permits to kill and import a rare animal. Allegedly, trophy hunts contribute to local economies and can help raise money and awareness for species conservation. However, serious doubt has arisen…
Narrowed Constellations in a Supranational Climate Change Regime Complex: The ‘Magic Number’ is Three
The world needs a supranational-level solution to climate change within very few years. Nonetheless, much existing scholarship almost stubbornly continues to promote solutions that are still too broad to be viable within a realistic timeframe. This article breaks with these theories and posits that effective climate change action can be instigated by a much lower number of nations than what has been promoted thus far, and that this is the only realistic solution in the scientifically proved timeframe in which catastrophic climate change can still be avoided. Such minilateralism among fewer nations is a more realistic solution with greater potential for more targeted and effective results. However, a crucial question remains to be answered in this context: what is the…
An Unstoppable Tide: Creating Environmental and Human Rights Law from the Bottom Up
This article argues that bottom-up, polycentric developments within national and international environmental and human rights law present potent alternatives to traditional top-down solutions, especially in relation to problems that require urgent legal action such as climate change. The article does not suggest that traditional solutions are no longer called for. Rather, it promotes action from both angles. By way of background, the article briefly examines what “law” is, how law is more and more frequently developed at the local level with public participation (i.e. from the “bottom up”) as well as the pros and cons of such development. The article describes the recognized interface between severe environmental problems and human rights issues. It then presents the findings of the author’s…
