Legal Services

Exposing unjust law.
Initiating democracy.

CELDF dares to challenge law that strips communities of democracy, permits privateering corporations to violate human rights and the rights of nature, while lawmakers invoke empty platitudes about America’s commitment to equality, liberty, and justice.

Want to protect your community’s rights against corporate abuse? The courts say first exhaust all regulatory “remedies.” You know, the ones written by corporate lobbyists.

CELDF has worked with hundreds of communities across the U.S. to develop laws that call out and challenge industry bullying, toxic trespass, and government-permitted violations of the rights of communities and their natural environments. In addition, CELDF provides legal support to non-governmental organizations and governments around the world to advance the Rights of Nature.

We know why the strategy of regulating the rate of environmental destruction has failed to protect the environment. It was never meant to halt the profitable extraction of resources, the use of toxic technology and energy sources, and the endless production of more from the very substance of the living world. In every confrontation between Americans trying to protect themselves and their local environments against wealthy corporations, the courts double-down on Nature’s legal status as mere property, the community’s lack of legal authority and standing, and the corporation’s status as a rights-bearing person. Everything about this must change. CELDF is on the case.

“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”

– Adam Smith, author of Wealth of Nations

CELDF FRONTALLY CHALLENGES SYSTEMIC INJUSTICE

CELDF champions the kind of democracy where the people directly affected participate in shaping the rules, because otherwise, Law is nothing but bullying.

There is no shortage of communities under siege. In thousands of American towns, local soil and water are poisoned every day because agencies charged with protecting the environment give corporations permits to let them quietly dump forever chemicals and carcinogens on the land, hidden in urban sewage sludge and other residual wastes officially relabeled for “beneficial use.”   Regulatory agencies greenlight harmful activities to humans and the environment to prevent corporate financial losses. The litany of agency-legalized community invasions encompasses every industrial project over generations in all fifty states. Every industrial greenhouse gas responsible for causing climate change released in the United States was released from a corporate site in a community that was forbidden to stop it. Every fracking well that poisoned a family’s drinking water had government permits – official permission to do it. Every bomb train rolling through our towns; all the runoff from factory farms causing toxic algae blooms: they’re all legal. LEGAL!

And that goes for corporate violations of human rights too. We’ve seen attempts to protect the rights of homeless women, men, and children go down in defeat when chambers of commerce, real estate developers, and building associations flood campaigns with negatively charged money. Everything from sanctuary status for immigrants to police accountability to worker rights have been blocked by cash influencers. The cost of freedom and constitutional rights has skyrocketed beyond the citizen’s means. And the courts have been nothing but supportive of the corporate usurpers of democracy.

CELDF’s legal stance is with the people and nature in community together. Always was; always will be.

CELDF and LAW

Legal Services

Rights of Nature

Local Law Center

International

Attorneys Anonymous

State Law Center

What does CELDF’s LEGAL program offer?

CELDF’s legal assistance goes beyond the typical and desperate search for overlooked loopholes in corporate-biased anti-social laws. CELDF’s team understands the nuances and legal conundrums that trip up local organizers. Our guiding principle is to ask clients what it is they aspire to achieve, not “What’s the best deal you think you can get?”  And then we get to it.

Corporate ideologues have turned state preemption into a community wrecking ball across the United States. Appropriately, CELDF’s legal focus has turned to state-level efforts to lift the weight of Dillon’s Rule off the chest of municipalities so they can breathe freely again. That’s why CELDF offers state constitutional amendments that recognize municipal and county authority to enact local rights-protecting laws that are free from state and corporate interference. We’ve also responded to requests for state legislation to do the same,

We also assist local communities selectively, where community solidarity and commitment to changing the legal power dynamics are deemed to be high. It isn’t enough for residents to know what needs to change, nor even to believe that change is possible. It will require organized collective actions by the community to implement the change.

Two years after we innovated for the  rights for ecosystems in the United States in 2006, in Tamaqua Borough, Pennsylvania, CELDF’s international Rights of Nature work began in Ecuador. Ecuador consulted CELDF about the inclusion of Rights of Pachamama (rights of nature) as they drew up a new national constitution in 2008 and since then our advisory role in nations around the world has expanded.

As the Rights of Nature Movement assumes a planetary presence, CELDF has determined that making landmark judicial and legislative decisions coming out of South America available to English speakers is important to the movement setting deeper roots in the U.S. We have, therefore, commissioned translations and made them publicly available so that lawyers, judges, electeds and community members can read for themselves how Rights for Nature is being implemented.

Finally, a funny thing happened to the legal profession on its way to becoming a support system for the corporate-state. Attorneys of conscience started questioning their career choices. Many entered the profession intent on making a positive difference for people and communities seeking simple justice. A growing number of them have become fed-up with the legally programmed inferior status of Americans and the natural world in legal competition with a liability-free investor class that uses its corporate avatars to lord it over everyone. CELDF proposes bringing those attorneys together, with all their talents and scruples, to share stories and experiences and to map a new way forward in the context of law.

John Adams was wrong when he said that the U.S. Constitution created “a government of laws, and not of men.” Today there are plenty of laws, but only a minority of men who use them to their advantage.

It’s time to build your community resistance and resilience.

The best way to start the process is to complete our brief contact form. From there our Legal team will initiate a conversation. We will call on connections across all our program areas to best assist you.