Gerald Torres

Gerald Torres

Gerald Torres

Professor of Environmental Justice
Faculty Director; Yale Center for Environmental Justice
Yale School of the Environment

A pioneer in the field of environmental law, Torres has spent his career examining the intrinsic connections between the environment, agricultural and food systems, and social justice. His research into how race and ethnicity impact environmental policy has been influential in the emergence and evolution of the field of environmental justice. His work also includes the study of conflicts over resource management between Native American tribes, states, and the federal government.

Previously, Torres taught at Cornell Law School, the University of Texas Law School, and the University of Minnesota Law School, serving as an associate dean at both. He is also a former president of the Association of American Law Schools and served as deputy assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and as council to the Attorney General during the Clinton administration.

Torres’s past work has examined how U.S. regulations have created racially or ethnically marginalized communities that bear a disproportionate share of environmental burdens and also has focused on developing strategies to improve governmental decision-making. He is also a leading scholar in critical race theory — a theoretical framework that examines questions of race and racism from a legal standpoint. His book The Miner’s Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy, coauthored with Lani Guinier, was described as “one of the most provocative and challenging books on race produced in years.”

Email: gerald.torres@yale.edu

Recent Publications

Making Law, Chapter in A. Bartel & D. Castillo (eds) THE SCHOLAR AS HUMAN (Cornell, 2021)

Interjurisdictional spatial externalities in groundwater management. Sears, Louis, C.-Y. Cynthia Lin Lawell, David Lim, Gerald Torres, and M. Todd Walter. (2021) Working paper, Cornell University.

Managing common pool resources: Lessons from groundwater resource extraction in California. Sears, Louis, C.-Y. Cynthia Lin Lawell, Gerald Torres, and M. Todd Walter. (2021). Working paper, Cornell University.

Adjudicated groundwater property rights: A structural model of the dynamic game among groundwater users in California. Sears, Louis, C.-Y. Cynthia Lin Lawell, Gerald Torres, and M. Todd Walter. (2021). Working paper, Cornell University.

With a Seashell to My Ear, chapter in Hensler & Hensler, ADVICE FROM THE OCEAN (2020)

Point-Counterpoint on Climate Litigation, Judicature (2020)

Decolonization: Treaties, Resource Use, and Environmental Conservation, University of Colorado Law Review (2020)

People and Partners