SCHOOL NEWS ::
Mackintosh, Promise Institute Drive Effort on Ecocide Scholars from UCLA School of Law’s Promise Institute for Human Rights have played a key part in defining the new crime of ecocide, which could have significant implications for battling climate destruction. The latest effort to produce an internationally accepted legal definition of ecocide — meant to describe mass environmental destruction — has its roots in a 2020 symposium at UCLA Law. That event explored the connection between human rights and the climate crisis, and it gave rise to a working group dedicated Kate Mackintosh to exploring a new definition of the term. The group joined forces with an international drafting panel, for which Kate Mackintosh, executive director of the Promise Institute, served as co-deputy chair. “It seems obvious, on a moral and intuitive level, that destruction of our environment should be an international crime,” says Mackintosh, who relied on the support of UCLA Law students during her work on the project. “Our job was to bring together our collective knowledge of international criminal and environmental law and create a credible new international crime to take its place alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.” Ecocide has been in the lexicon since the Vietnam War, when the term was used to describe the immediate and long-term damage that the
defoliant chemical Agent Orange caused. In the decades since, scholars and legal experts launched efforts to recognize ecocide as a crime of the same magnitude as genocide but politics and shifting international priorities kept those efforts at bay. While some nations adopted ecocide laws, the global community never fully embraced them, limiting legal options to hold even the most destructive actors accountable. Thanks to Mackintosh and her colleagues, the new definition could revolutionize the way the world determines what constitutes a crime against the health of the planet. For the new definition to become a part of international law, two-thirds of the nations that are signed up to the International Criminal Court must vote to adopt it. If adopted, ecocide would be the first new international crime since 1945, when the horrors of World War II fueled international support for common legal foundations against genocide and crimes against humanity. Mackintosh says that under an international law shaped by the new definition, corporate and governmental decisionmakers could be held personally responsible for their actions or inactions. “Ecocide law has been written so that individuals who have the ability to make powerful environmental decisions will understand they are personally accountable for the outcomes of those decisions,” she says. “Ideally ecocide law need never be used. The hope is that this will change the risk analysis in a way that leads to better choices for the environment. We all win when that happens.”
An ‘Opportunity to Give Back’: First Graton Scholars Arrive at UCLA Law
Ashley Anderson
Shara Burwell
Rachel Hsu
Ashley Anderson was broadly engaged as a high school student in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. National Honor Society member. Two-time participant in the VEX Robotics World Championship, where she competed against kids from communities far from her home in Cherokee County. And through college at Harvard University and the years that followed, Anderson developed a strong focus and sense of purpose — a motivating ethic that she can now put into action as a Graton Scholar at UCLA Law. “I hope to use my legal training to ensure healthy ecosystems on tribal lands, including my hometown,” she says today. Alongside Shara Burwell and Rachel Hsu, Anderson joins UCLA Law in large part thanks to a transformative full-tuition scholarship that was created in 2020 through a gift of $15 million from the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. The Graton Scholars program brings to the law school the most talented students who are from Native Nations or who are interested in pursuing careers as tribal advocates. UCLA Law is a longtime leader among the country’s preeminent law schools in developing courses, programs, and scholarship addressing the legal standing and rights of Native peoples. Graton Scholars thus gain an invaluable education and entrée into a distinguished Indian law network. “We are so fortunate to be welcoming Ashley, Shara, and Rachel to UCLA Law as our first Graton Scholars,” says Professor Angela R. Riley, who oversees the Graton Scholars program. “We know that they — and the generations of Graton Scholars who follow them — will use their legal education to advocate for Indian country, defend tribal sovereignty, and advance Indigenous rights.” Hsu attended Barnard College and has worked as a tutor for disabled students, a legal assistant at an intellectual property law firm, a supervisor at a homeless shelter, and an intern at the Museum of Modern Art. “While I’m approaching law school with an open mind, I know my legal career will center around art and cultural property law,” she says. “The protection of Native American cultural artifacts and practices deserve my greatest focus as the longest-standing cultural patrimony in Los Angeles, California, and North America overall.” Burwell graduated from San Diego State University and worked for the innovative Peruvian organization Awamaki, empowering Indigenous women and girls who work as artisanal weavers in rural communities. “My grandmother is a member of the Leech Lake band of the Ojibwe tribe and an Indian boarding school survivor. She was taken from her reservation and family and adopted to a white family, and yet, she is one of the lucky ones,” she says. “The systems of power are failing Indigenous women around the world and these women need an advocate to fight for them. I want to be that advocate."
34 UCLA LAW MAGAZINE | FALL 2021
