Environmental Justice Law and Policy
This MIT seminar examines how environmental benefits and burdens get distributed unequally across race, income, and geography, and what legal and policy tools exist to address that. Readings and discussions draw on social science, public policy, and law to build frameworks for analyzing cases where pollution, land use, and infrastructure decisions fall disproportionately on marginalized communities. Topics include the history of the environmental justice movement, regulatory approaches at the federal and state level, and the limits of existing civil rights and environmental law in remedying these inequities. The course materials, published through MIT OpenCourseWare, include the full syllabus, weekly reading lists, and assignment prompts used in the actual MIT classroom. There are no video lectures, so the course works best as a self-directed reading and writing seminar rather than a watch-along class. All materials are free under a Creative Commons license, with no certificate offered.