Researching Environmental Justice & Human Rights in the Americas: Journal Articles

There are a number of journals that focus on international environmental law in general and various subtopics. For a list of these journals (available in English), see the list compiled by the Centre for Environmental Law and Global Sustainability at the University of Ottawa. Many of these publications are available in full text in HeinOnline.

SSRN is an electronic repository for international social sciences scholarship that includes the Legal Scholarship Network (LSN).  Thousands of downloadable abstracts, working papers, and published papers are available without charge.  Set up a free account in order to access all content. 

These databases and indexes provide author, subject, and title access to the vast array of published and online legal scholarship. Note that indexes like the Index to Legal Periodicals (ILP) generally provide access to records only rather than the full texts of articles. However, many ILP records contain links to the full texts of articles as they appear in HeinOnline.

Both Westlaw and Lexis also offer access to law journal databases, including some foreign law reviews. In Westlaw, you can limit your searches to secondary sources that focus on environmental law. Choose "Energy & Environment" from the list of "Practice Areas." In Lexis, you can choose "Environmental Law" under "Practice Area," then "All Environmental Law Reviews and Journals." 

HeinOnline is a digital archive that is probably best known for its Law Journal Library. However, HOL includes much more than law review articles. Of note for this topic is its Foreign & International Law Resources Database (FILRD), which includes yearbooks, periodicals, U.S. law digests (pertaining to international law), and international tribunal reports and decisions. This and other HOL databases include many historical materials. Similarly, HOL's journal coverage goes back to the first volume of the journal. In contrast, Westlaw and Lexis's journal coverage does not go back much further than the 1980s.

If researchers wish to go beyond law reviews and journals, they can explore the UIC Databases list, which includes many well-known non-law journal databases like JSTOR.  

Following is a list of selected articles, many of which can be found using the resources discussed above. It is important to use a variety of journal databases and indexes, as they all contain different journal titles and span different dates of coverage.

• de Oliveira Mazzuoli, V., & de Faria Moreira Teixeira, G. (2015). The environmental protection in the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Ius Humani. Law Journal, 4, 193–226. (Spanish only). 
• Mejía-Lemos, D. The right to a healthy environment and its justiciability before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: A critical appraisal of the Lhaka Honhat v Argentina judgement. Rev. Eur. Comp. & Int. Env. L. (RECIEL) 2022; 31( 2): 317–324.
• John H. Knox, Constructing the Human Right to a Healthy Environment, 16 Ann. Rev. L. & Soc. Sci. 79 (2020) available via Westlaw.
• John H. Knox, The Global Pact for the Environment: At the crossroads of human rights and the environment, 28 Rev. Eur. Comp. & Int. Env. L. (RECIEL) 40 (2019).
• Escazú Toolkit: Using the Escazú Agreement in Cases Before the Inter-American System (Nov. 2022). UIC Law White Paper

Google Scholar provides a search mechanism for locating scholarly literature across multiple disciplines, including law.  Search results on campus will indicate whether the source is available in full text through a UIC database.  Off campus, users may go to the "Settings" link and then "Library Links" to set up results that show links to UIC full-text databases.