Climate change is one of the most difficult legal challenges that the world faces today. Courts face new threats in combating climate change while interpreting legislation, previous case law and scientific evidence. Climate change includes issues regarding human rights, immigration rights, resource and land rights and native rights. New Zealand’s courts are limited by parliamentary sovereignty and cannot interpret the law in ways that invoke new legislation. Despite this, New Zealand’s legal system has played a critical role in climate change adaptation and policy innovation. In this project, I examine the use of the New Zealand Court system to better understand how the country is taking on the challenges climate changes poses. The project analyzes how the Environment Court tackles issues of climate change cases regarding land usage and resource management. However, it is important to discuss how the higher courts, the Court of Appeals, the High Court and the Supreme Court, settle climate change related disputes that exceed the jurisdiction of the Environment Court. All of New Zealand courts stay within the constraints of parliamentary sovereignty as they face a variety of issues resulting from climate change. To do this, I develop an original dataset. The data is from Environment Court cases, ranging from 1999 to 2021. The cases are coded to examine the court's response to these cases while taking into account the various impacts of climate change including land usage, pollution, and coastal erosion. Some cases from the higher courts are acknowledged in sections of the paper due to the importance of the case. First findings suggest that the court stays within the limits of parliamentary sovereignty and increases the legitimacy of future climate change litigation. The research at hand provides valuable insight on what future cases will cover and how courts around the world will respond.

Three different regimes have governed Bolivia within the past two years. Two of the regimes, the Morales and the Arce regimes, have been aligned with the Movement for Andean Socialism, a leftist party whose largest voting block is indigenous Bolivians. The other, the Áñez regime, was an interim government led by a right-wing alliance. This research examines the effect each regime has had on both indigenous rights litigation and the treatment of indigenous parties within the legal system. The analysis identifies how the three regimes interacted with the Bolivian legal system to affect indigenous rights. To explore this dynamic, the research develops an original case law dataset examining indigenous rights cases before the Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal of Bolivia from 2009 to 2021. Utilizing case law analysis, the study explores the extent to which the Tribunal’s decision constrains or empowers the regime in power. Finally, it analyzes the three regimes’ uses of the legal system to determine the extent of indigenous persecution or empowerment in each of the three regimes. Preliminary findings suggest that rulings during the Evo Morales regime had the most consistently favorable outcomes for indigenous rights, even in rulings which constrained the Morales government. While there is a dearth of cases before the Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal during the Áñez regime due to its short length, I provide additional data on lower-level court cases, use of prosecutors, and arbitrary detentions during this period to reveal the severity of indigenous persecution. I raise broader questions of judicial capture and regime change and both the promise and limitations of courts as an avenue for indigenous rights protections, and contextualizes comparisons between the legal systems of the three regimes within an understanding of the struggle for indigenous rights and related race and class based conflicts in Bolivia.

Emerging from past authoritarian regimes, it has not always been easy for developing democracies to maintain democratic rule in government institutions. However, for countries like South Korea, whose citizens are skeptical towards government actions due to a history of corruption, they hold a lot of faith in their judicial institutions as defenders of societal interests and democratic rule. To better understand the role of the judiciary in upholding democratic ideals in newer democracies, I study the Constitutional Court of Korea (CCK). Utilizing a sociolegal approach, I analyze how the CCK maintains legitimacy as the people’s court in upholding democracy. To answer this question, I create a unique dataset of the Court’s case law from 1995-2019 focusing on a case study of gender equality and political affairs. Through case law analysis, I analyze the Court’s efficacy in expanding non-traditional rights focused on gender equality and forming decisions that emphasize a separation of powers which limits political corruption. Preliminary findings reveal that the CCK has not hesitated to uphold democracy and holds widespread societal support as a proactive, accessible legal institution that is independent from other government influences. This research opens avenues to better comprehend the role of courts and their actions in rising democratic societies. Additionally, observing institutions like the CCK and their practices may serve as an example on a global scale of how courts play a role in preserving democratic norms.

The U Visa was introduced by Congress in 2000 as a form of relief for undocumented victims of violent crime. To qualify for the U Visa, an applicant must submit an I-918B Certification, signed by a local legal authority, certifying that the applicant has been helpful in the prosecution of the crime to which they are victim to. However, in some localities throughout Oregon and the United States at large, the efforts and interests of local law enforcement are entangled with those of federal immigration enforcement. Thus, for undocumented individuals, the act of contacting a local legal agency may present daunting consequences. This study explores the question—how does a collaborative relationship between local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement affect the extent to which U Visa protections are accessed by undocumented individuals in the state of Oregon? The purpose of this study is to assess the dichotomous relationship between local policing practices and forms of protective legislation offered to immigrants at the federal level. I hypothesize that fewer U Visa applications are successfully submitted in areas in which local law enforcement maintains a collaborative relationship with federal immigration enforcement, as I anticipate that undocumented individuals are ultimately deterred by the risk of deportation. To test this hypothesis, I compare the rate at which U Visa Certification requests are received and subsequently, approved and/or denied throughout the 36 counties of Oregon. The findings of this study will make clear how local policing practices may affect and ultimately, inhibit federally-offered forms of protective legislation. By understanding the ways in which undocumented individuals are systemically barred from mobilizing legislation, we may revise legal language and redefine local policing practices to make the U Visa more accessible and ultimately, better support immigrant communities.

Often in the language of law, individuals exist in the abstract. In immigration and criminal justice, the practical application of legal processes is undermined by relationships of power which create a hierarchy of access to law. In this project, I will define two populations, migrants and incarcerees, as surplus. Surplus populations are communities characterized by an enmity spearheaded by the state through persistent antagonistic rhetoric, and subsequently geographically separated and erased from society. My research is centered around the following question: how do frameworks of human rights ideology and racial capitalism explain the rhetorical and geographical construction of surplus populations? Through discourse and secondary data analysis, I investigate state policies passed in the United States and Australia regarding politics and practices of migration and incarceration as they relate to the antagonism and the removal of these populations. Next, I explore the relationship between these populations and the sites of separation (prisons and detention centers). Specifically, I will be looking at the separation geographies of three institutions: Guantánamo Bay Migrant Operations Center, Rikers Island Prison, and Manus Island Regional Processing Center. Guided by the analytical work of critical race scholars Achille Mbembe and Angela Davis, I reveal a pattern of societal removal, in which rhetoric manifests policy manifests disparate and oppressive corporeal geographical outcomes. With this pattern, the foundations of a global scale pattern become possible, embedded in historical racism and xenophobia. In conclusion, I suggest that these attitudes of oppression have become ingrained in legal doctrine and application in a way that is incurable by a human rights approach and subject surplus populations to undue overrepresentation behind bars. In reprieve, I use critical imagination to question the intrinsic nature of the nation-state and their borders, inspiring the possibility of long-term solutions outside these societal structures.

The stress and uncertainty posed by infectious disease outbreaks generates intergroup social conflict. In communities with disparate distributions of power, one population may blame another for spreading the disease. This social scapegoating subsequently exacerbates existing economic inequalities, medical discrimination, and harmful stereotypes. Amidst power struggles, political elites can mobilize scapegoating as a tool to unify their support base around a common enemy. In the United States, Asian Americans frequently fell victim to epidemic scapegoating, from outbreaks of smallpox in the nineteenth century to the more recent SARS outbreak of the twenty-first century. During these previous health emergencies, Asian Americans became associated with disease and cultural backwardness. The negative perceptions of Asian Americans then translated into restrictive immigration and citizenship policies. The Coronavirus Pandemic renewed anti-Asian American xenophobia. In 2020 alone, reported hate crimes against Asian Americans increased 150 percent. Racist and Sinophobic language proliferated the internet and media. President Donald Trump and other prominent politicians began utilizing location-based labels for the coronavirus, such as China Virus, Chinese Flu, and Kung Flu. This research assesses whether these location-based labels perpetuates anti-Asian xenophobia. To do so, this research analyzes the transcripts of 163 public appearances made by Donald Trump in 2020. I examined the frequency and context of Trump’s location-based terms throughout the year and compared this with the percentage of hate crimes considered anti-Asian. The data suggests that Trump’s utilization of location-based terms correlated with a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in the early months of the pandemic. Additionally, the data shows support for the fact that the upcoming election motivated Trump’s usage of these location-based terms. By illuminating the mechanisms through which the President incited anti-Asian xenophobia during the coronavirus pandemic, this research provides insight into how to prevent social scapegoating in future epidemics.