Legal remedies consistently fail to aid communities in environmental justice struggles

Evidence

However, our definitions of racism and injustice need not be confined to juridical notions. As we have written elsewhere, and as illustrated by the Chester case study, the struggle for environmental justice is primarily a political and economic struggle, with law one facet of that struggle. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 333 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

The Court’s decisions during the 1990s were precisely the opposite in their jurisprudential thrust. The Court repeatedly ruled against the citizen’s ability to maintain environmental lawsuits to promote environmental protection, while ruling in favor of the standing of economic interests that alleged that they were suffering from “needless economic dislocation produced by agency officials zealously but unintelligently pursuing their environmental objectives.” Indeed, the Court’s rulings were so systematic in raising barriers to citizen standing in environmental cases that one justice, frustrated in dissent, openly complained about what he described as the majority’s “slash-and-burn expedition through the law of environmental standing.” — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 596 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

My struggle was to make them understand that they’re the ones who have to make everything happen. It was not him [the lawyer] who was going to be able to come in, it was not me who was going to be there to come and save them. I mean, we’re not coming in on a horse and here’s a knight in shining armor, coming in and saving the community. And I had prepared them for that. My whole thing was: it’s yours, it’s all of us, and it’s not having an attorney come in and he’s going to run and do everything for you, and so on. They knew that. But we also knew that we needed technical assistance, we needed the legal advice, we needed all these other things that the community didn’t have. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 456 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Courts reject impact-based environmental racism claims absent proven intentional discrimination — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 327; No federal constitutional environmental-justice claim has ever prevailed — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 573; EJ groups succeed by building power outside formal decision-making structures (+5 more)

Related

• Environmental justice is chiefly a political-economic struggle with law as one tool (similarity 0.85)
• Environmentalists assumed pollution laws would help the poor but never verified it (similarity 0.81)
• 1990s Supreme Court decisions systematically raised barriers to citizen environmental standing (similarity 0.80)
• No federal constitutional environmental-justice claim has ever prevailed (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Environmental justice is chiefly a political-economic struggle with law as one tool #qualifies (0.85) — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 333
• 1990s Supreme Court decisions systematically raised barriers to citizen environmental standing #exemplifies (0.85) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 596
• Legal help must build community capacity rather than substitute for community action. #complicates (0.80) — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 456
• Environmentalists assumed pollution laws would help the poor but never verified it #corroborates (0.75) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 613
• Environmental review documents omit or erase the communities they harm #complicates (0.72) — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 1071