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Inundations: Pain, Bodies, and the Law

Delivered by Professor Margot J. Pollans, James D. Hopkins Professor of Law 2023–2025

Professor Pollans's lecture will explore legal responses to inundation. Human bodies have always been porous, but one of the conditions of modernity is an acceleration of inputs. Among other things, toxic chemicals, bullets, noise, and information flood human bodies. Some of these intrusions are harmless. Others may even be beneficial. But many cause extraordinary psychological and physical pain. In the United States today, dominant legal structures eschew attempts to prevent intrusion and instead emphasize: 1) individual and institutional options to engage in private shielding, and 2) mechanisms for post-intrusion cleanup. This structure operates in substantive public health and safety laws. It is also replicated through administrative law, which stymies potential reform through a series of procedural and methodological choices that overwhelm regulators and devalue information about actual human experiences such as pain.

About Professor Margot J. Pollans

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Professor Margot Pollans joined Haub Law’s faculty in 2015. She is the Faculty Director of the Pace Food Law Center and also the James D. Hopkins Professor of Law for the 2023–2025 academic years. Previously, she served as the Shamik and Adrienne Trivedi Faculty Scholar from 2020–2022. She teaches several classes including Agriculture Law and the Environment, Food Systems & the Environment Law, and Environmental Law Survey.

During her time at Haub Law she has been a leader in building the national reputation of the Pace Food Law Center. She is also part of the Farm Bill Law Enterprise, a national partnership of law school programs working toward a farm bill that reflects the long-term needs of our society, including economic opportunity and stability, public health and nutrition, climate change mitigation and adaptation, public resources stewardship, and racial and socioeconomic justice.

Professor Pollans is an accomplished scholar whose primary research interests lie in the areas of food and agriculture law, administrative law and social justice. Her academic work has appeared in a variety of journals including in the California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, the Ohio State Law Journal, the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, and the Harvard Environmental Law Review. She is also the co-author of a casebook, Food Law: Cases & Materials. In 2022, she was named the recipient of Haub Law’s distinguished Goettel Prize for Faculty Scholarship for her article, "Eaters, Powerless by Design" published by Michigan Law Review (120 Mich. L. Rev. 643 (2022)).

Before joining Haub Law, Professor Pollans was the inaugural academic fellow at UCLA School of Law’s Resnick Program for Food Law and Policy. Previously, she was a Staff Attorney and Clinical Teaching Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Public Representation, where she worked on a range of environmental litigation and supervised student clinicians. Following law school, Pollans clerked for the Honorable David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In 2017 she was named “40 Under 40 Rising Stars in Food Policy” by the NYC Food Policy Center.

About the James D. Hopkins Professor of Law Memorial Lecture

The James D. Hopkins Professor of Law is an endowed chair established with contributions from alumni of Elisabeth Haub School of Law at 91���� and members of the legal community to honor Judge James D. Hopkins who served as Interim Dean of the Law School in 1982–1983. The title of James D. Hopkins Professor of Law is held by a distinguished member of the faculty for a two-year term in recognition of outstanding scholarship and teaching. The James D. Hopkins Professor Memorial Lecture is delivered by the honoree during their term to the law school community and public.

This event is free and open to the public. Please register below.

This is an in person event. 1 PD credit will be awarded to students who attend.