University of Utah : S.J. Quinney College of Law

New College of Law Graduate to be Published in Environmental Law journal

Posted: 19 Jun 2007 by Barry Scholl
Updated on: 19 Jun 2007

Tags: erika george faculty student environmental law 

Jamie Pleune, a May 2007 graduate of the Quinney College, recently received a rare honor to go with her diploma—future publication in the prestigious quarterly journal Environmental Law, published by Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon. 

“I had sent my article to every environmental journal I knew of not really expecting a response,” Pleune says. “So I was surprised that a publication, particularly a good publication, would be interested in publishing what I had to say.”

Pleune originally wrote the article for Professor Erika George’s Human Rights and Corporations seminar this spring. In it, she argues that personifying corporations in the standing analysis has led to a regulatory environment that disproportionately protects the rights of corporations over the public interest, particularly in the arena of environmental law.

Pleune details that, “The article uses global warming as a factual backdrop where the interests of humanity and the interests of corporations — particularly those in the energy industry — are diametrically opposed because global warming threatens basic human needs like water, food and health but regulation poses the risk of reduced profits for some of the most powerful corporations in the world.”

Titled “Is Scalian Standing the Latest Sighting of the Lochner-ess Monster? Using Global Warming to Explore the Myth of the Corporate Person,” the article uses the political history of global warming regulation to argue that the difference in size and power between a person and a corporation dramatically affects a corporation’s political power and its ability to enact laws in its favor, challenging the assumption in Scalian standing analysis that a regulated entity should always have standing, according to Pleune.  Although she describes the title as “long,” Pleune explains that, “it summarizes my argument — that the Scalian standing analysis gives constitutional protection to a fiction, protecting economic actors over human individuals.”

Professor Erika George adds, “Jamie’s simply a pleasure to read. She’s a wonderful writer who brings an imaginative flair to her analysis and her use of imagery makes the abstract concrete in a way that is compelling to even the casual reader.”

Pleune, who will begin a judicial clerkship with Justice Jill Parrish in the Utah Supreme Court in the fall, has a longstanding interest in environmental issues. She would like to do a second clerkship in the federal courts and ultimately work as an environmental lawyer for a state or federal agency.