Kyoto at the Local Level: Federalism and Translocal Organizations of Government Actors (TOGAS)

August 2010

Citation:

ELR 10768

Issue

Author

Judith Resnik, Joshua Civin, and Joseph Frueh

I. Changing the Contours of American Law and of Federalism

During the last decades, domestic policies in the United States on global warming have been shaped through iterative interactions among transnational lawmakers, the national government, and hundreds of subnational entities. Exemplary are the activities of the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM), which crafted a Climate Protection Agreement endorsed by some 800 localities. As a result, although the United States has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, localities throughout the country have affiliated with the principles that Kyoto embodies.

This essay, a much-condensed version of a longer article and a book chapter, places translocal action on climate change in the contexts of two more general phenomena-- subnational importation of "foreign" law and the impact of translocal organizations on American federalism. Entities such as USCM resemble in some respects nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) but gain their political capital from the fact that their members are government officials or employees such as mayors, attorneys general, governors, or legislators. To distinguish such entities from governmental bodies and private sector groups, we offer the term "translocal organizations of government actors," with the acronym "TOGAs."

Judith Resnik is the Arthur Liman Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where she teaches about federalism, courts, procedure, and local and global interventions to diminish inequalities. Her recent books include Migrations and Mobilities: Citizenship, Borders, and Gender (co-edited with Seyla Benhabib, 2009), and Federal Courts Stories (co-edited with Vicki C. Jackson, 2009). Joshua Civin is an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. A 2003 graduate of Yale Law School, he served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and from 1994 to 1997 represented the First Ward on New Haven, Connecticut's Board of Aldermen. Joseph Frueh is a recent graduate of Yale Law School and a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. His other publications include The Anders Brief in Appeals From Civil Commitment, 118 Yale L.J. 272 (2008), and Pesticides, Preemption, and the Return of Tort Protection, 23 Yale J. on Reg. 299 (2006).

Kyoto at the Local Level: Federalism and Translocal Organizations of Government Actors (TOGAS)

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Kyoto at the Local Level: Federalism and Translocal Organizations of Government Actors (TOGAS)