PLACE and Power

This series of virtual conversations — sponsored With the Virginia Environmental Law Journal and the Virginia Environmental Law Forum — explores connections between human place-based relationships and the law and politics of environmental governance. 

PLACE and Power: A Conversation With Sarah Krakoff and Gerald Torres About the Environment and Native American Rights

Thursday, April 22, 2021
1 p.m.

University of Virginia School of Law · PLACE and Power: The Environment and Native American Rights

Professors Sarah Krakoff and Gerald Torres will discuss issues of politics, justice and progress at the intersection of environmental governance and the rights and interests of Native American peoples. The discussion will focus on threats to lands and other natural and cultural resources, such as Bears Ears, and the exclusion of historic tribal uses from publicly managed lands, such as the Grand Canyon.

Krakoff, a nationally recognized expert in Native American law, natural resources law and environmental justice, is the Moses Lasky Professor of Law at the University of Colorado. She is the recipient of two university-wide awards: the Hazel Barnes Prize for distinguished scholarship and teaching, and the Chase Community Service Award for her public service work with low-income communities.

Torres, also a distinguished scholar of environmental law and federal Native American law, is a Professor of Environmental Justice at the Yale School of the Environment and professor of law at Yale Law School. His research into how race and ethnicity impact environmental policy has informed his teaching and practical experiences, and has been widely influential in the field of environmental justice.

The event is the fourth in the “PLACE and Power” series of virtual conversations exploring connections between human place-based relationships and the law and politics of environmental governance, including governance of the built environment.

PLACE and Power: Pathways to Racial and Economic Equity

Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2020
4 p.m. 

Scholars, authors and policy activists David Troutt and Thad Williamson will discuss the pathways to racial and economic equity in cities and in the nation as a whole, with a focus on the effects of local and regional housing, employment and anti-poverty policies. 

PLACE and Power: A Conversation With Mary Nichols and Ann Carlson 

Oct. 16, 2020
4 p.m. 

University of Virginia School of Law · PLACE and Power: Improving Air Quality

California Air Resources Board Chair Mary D. Nichols and UCLA law professor Ann E. Carlson will discuss the productive but fraught relationship between cities, states and national environmental decisions-makers, with a focus on the important strides made to improve air quality in California over the past several decades.

Carlson, one of the country’s leading scholars of climate change law and policy, is the Shirley Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law, and the inaugural faculty director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the UCLA School of Law. She is also on the faculty of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

Nichols joined the California Air Resources Board in 2007. She has also served as California’s secretary for Natural Resources (1999-2003); a senior staff attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council; assistant administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation; and head of the Institute of Environment and Sustainability at UCLA.

PLACE and Power: A Conversation With Emily Prifogle and Earl Swift

Friday, Sept. 18, 2020
10:30 a.m.

University of Virginia School of Law · PLACE and Power: How Rural Places Shape the Environment

Legal historian Emily Prifogle and author Earl Swift will discuss the importance of rural places in shaping the laws, customs and attitudes of the people who live in them, as well as their role in the cultural and political future of the nation.

Prifogle, a University of Michigan Law School professor, focuses on the use and experience of law in rural areas. She is currently working on a book that tells a story of the rural Midwest in a constant process of transformation along lines of class, race and gender in the 20th century.

Swift is a journalist and author of “Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island.” The book records Tangier Island’s distinctive community as the physical place that defines and supports it shrinks with the rising waters of the Chesapeake Bay.

BOOK PANEL

Reviving Rationality: Saving Cost-Benefit Analysis for the Sake of the Environment and Our Health

Tuesday, Nov. 17
7 p.m.

In their new book “Reviving Rationality: Saving Cost-Benefit Analysis for the Sake of the Environment and Our Health,” UVA Law professor Michael Livermore and New York University School of Law professor Richard Revesz argue that President Donald Trump’s administration has destabilized the decades-long bipartisan consensus that federal agencies must base their decisions on evidence, expertise and analysis.

In a panel moderated by PLACE Director Jonathan Z. Cannon, the authors and other scholars will discuss the future of cost-benefit analysis and environmental law and policy. 

Panelists

• Jonathan Adler, Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law; Director, Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law, Case Western Reserve University School of Law
• Michael Livermore, Edward F. Howrey Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
• Richard Revesz, Lawrence King Professor of Law; Dean Emeritus; Director, Institute for Policy Integrity, New York University School of Law
• Amy Sinden, Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law
• Moderator: Jonathan Z. Cannon, Blaine T. Phillips Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law; Director, Program in Law, Communities and the Environment (PLACE), University of Virginia School of Law