This course examines and evaluates how contemporary advocates employ law to protect the environment, secure equal access to environmental health, and contribute to social justice. Environmentalists over the past four decades have invested heavily in legal strategies as a means to achieve social change. The environmental justice movement, in contrast, has called this focus on law reform and litigation into question. Tracking the evolution of the movement, this course examines how contemporary advocates employ law in their struggles against environmental inequities, through a series of local and global case studies. Understandings of the contested concepts of “environment’ and “justice” will be continually refined throughout the course. Students will gain a grounding in the theoretical underpinnings of the environmental justice movement, with particular attention to the dynamics of gender, race and class in contemporary debates, and the central role of Indigenous peoples in land and water defence transnationally.