Great Lakes Law

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is the boldly titled new book from Dan Egan, science reporter extraordinaire at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Egan’s focus is squarely on invasive species and it shapes the book’s outlook on the health and future of the Great Lakes. He could have retold the story of clear-cutting and overfishing, industrial pollution and rivers on fire, which thanks to public outcry and the environmental laws of 1970s, is... Read more →

The Flint Water Crisis: Systemic Racism Through the Lens of Flint – Report of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission

The Michigan Civil Rights Commission has just released a major report, The Flint Water Crisis: Systemic Racism Through the Lens of Flint. Oday Salim, Senior Attorney at the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, testified before the Commission and authored the following guest post on the Commission’s report. The Flint Water Crisis: Systemic Racism Through the Lens of Flint is not just another recycled indictment of government officials with all the accompanying horrid details of the... Read more →

Great Lakes Environmental Law Center fellows for 2017

We welcome two new Great Lakes Environmental Law Center fellows for 2017, joining two returning fellows from last year- (L-R, Sabra Bushey, Jasmin M. Haynes, Erin Mette; Joe Regalia not pictured) Sabra Bushey, Wayne Law ’17, returns for a second year as a fellow. She is also a second-year member of the school’s National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition team and the Board of the Environmental Law Society. She graduated from the University of Maryland,... Read more →

Border Flows: A Century of the Canadian-American Water Relationship

A healthy and strong community has no need for walls on its borders. Rather, borders should be a place of cooperation and peace for people and the natural environment. A new book, Border Flows: A Century of the Canadian-American Water Relationship, offers a collection of essays about our northern border over time and across the length of the continent. Edited by Lynne Heasley and Daniel Macfarlane, the book has contributions from writers and scholars in... Read more →

A Changing Environment in China: The Ripe Opportunity for Environmental Law Clinics to Increase Public Participation and to Shape Law and Policy

My colleague Nick Schroeck has just published an exciting article exploring new opportunities for environmental law clinics in China. Nick directs Wayne Law's Transnational Environmental Law Clinic and is Executive Director of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center. In the fall of 2014, Nick traveled to Xi'an China where he taught international environmental law at the Northwest University of Politics & Law as part of a faculty exchange program. While Nick was teaching at NWUPL,... Read more →

Federal court orders the state to deliver bottled water and inform residents about lead contamination in Flint’s drinking water

“In modern society, when we turn on a faucet, we expect safe drinking water to flow out. As the evidence shows, that is no longer the case in Flint. The Flint water crisis has in effect turned back the clock to a time when people traveled to central water sources to fill their buckets and carry the water home.” – U.S. District Court Judge David M. Lawson, Opinion and Order Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary... Read more →

An American Reset - Safe Water & a Workable Model of Federalism

The following guest post is by Professor Cara Cunningham Warren of the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. Professor Warren’s background includes both domestic litigation and U.S.-Canadian law, and she is currently an LL.M. candidate at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Her recent article, An American Reset—Safe Water & a Workable Model of Federalism is forthcoming in the Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum. In the article, Professor Warren explains the Flint... Read more →

Safe Drinking Water: A Tale of Three Cities - Sixteenth Annual Great Lakes Water Conference at University of Toledo College of Law

Safe drinking water will be the focus of the 16th Annual Great Lakes Water Conference on Friday, November 4, 2016 at the University of Toledo College of Law. Todd Flood, Special Counsel for the Michigan Attorney General Flint water crisis investigation (and a Toledo Law alum) will open the conference with a keynote speech, followed by a panel I’m moderating that will explore the situation and legal developments in Flint in more detail (with NRDC... Read more →

Michigan court allows claims against the state for violating Constitutional rights to bodily injury from the Flint water crisis to go forward

In one of the first court decisions on the Flint water crisis, Mays v. Snyder, the Michigan Court of Claims has ruled that a major class action based on the state’s alleged violation of individual rights to bodily integrity under substantive due process can proceed. The court’s opinion begins with a detailed factual background based on allegations which would give rise to valid claims against the state for causing the Flint water crisis and state... Read more →

Supreme Court allows review of federal wetland jurisdictional determinations before permitting

Earlier this summer, in United States Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co., Inc., 136 S.Ct. 1807 (2016), the United States Supreme Court unanimously held that an approved jurisdictional determination made by the United States Army Corps of Engineers under the Clean Water Act is a “final agency action” subject to immediate judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act. The case gives property owners a more timely chance to challenge federal wetland protection measures on... Read more →