{"id":2377,"date":"2019-08-20T09:32:59","date_gmt":"2019-08-20T13:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=2377"},"modified":"2019-08-19T19:35:01","modified_gmt":"2019-08-19T23:35:01","slug":"her-motto-the-law-is-there-to-be-changed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2019\/08\/20\/her-motto-the-law-is-there-to-be-changed\/","title":{"rendered":"Her Motto: The Law is There to be Changed"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s the ultimate David and Goliath story. When attorney Katie Redford \u201990 and her EarthRights International nonprofit decided to sue the World Bank\u2019s International Finance Corporation (IFC), experts said it was impossible. But Redford\u2019s been told no before. As with previous instances, she proceeded anyway \u2026 and won.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the U.S. Supreme Court case Jam v. International Finance Corporation, EarthRights represented Budha Ismail Jam and fellow fishermen from Gujarat, India. The plaintiffs say that their livelihoods are suffering because of environmental devastation caused by the nearby Tata Mundra coal-fired power plant. The IFC \u2014 the private lending arm of the World Bank \u2014 is a big investor in the plant, and EarthRights claims that the IFC ignored the plant\u2019s harmful environmental practices. <\/span><\/p>\n

The crux of the case, however, was whether the IFC was immune to lawsuits under the protection of the International Organizations Immunity Act. \u201cEveryone told us, \u2018You can\u2019t sue international financial institutions because they have absolute immunity,\u2019\u201d Redford says. But on Feb. 27, in a 7-1 ruling, the Supreme Court decided that the IFC can be sued in U.S. courts. Although the decision didn\u2019t result in immediate reparations for the Gujarat fishing community, it removed the IFC\u2019s absolute immunity in this and all future cases. <\/span><\/p>\n

EarthRights became involved in the case after being approached by other nonprofit and community organizations. \u201cThe World Bank is complicit in funding problematic projects all over the world,\u201d Redford says. \u201cMany of its projects do serve an important development mission, but our argument is, with any institution that thinks it doesn\u2019t have to obey rules, there\u2019s going to be bad people and things are going to go wrong.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Comprising lawyers and activists, EarthRights aims to \u201ccombine the power of law and the power of people in defense of human rights and the environment,\u201d Redford explains. She\u2019s one of the three founders who started the organization in 1995. \u201cBasically, we came up with this legal theory \u2014 which was novel at the time \u2014 that in the age of globalization, corporations should be subject to the law,\u201d Redford says. \u201cWhen we started, international law hadn\u2019t caught up with corporate globalization.\u201d Thus, their first case intended to \u201ctry to bring the power of the legal system to bear on corporate human rights abuses in foreign countries.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

In that first lawsuit, EarthRights took on Unocal Oil Corporation for human rights abuses related to an oil pipeline in Myanmar. It was based on Redford\u2019s 1994 law school paper in which she was looking at the Alien Torts Claims Act provision giving foreigners the right to sue over international law violations. She scored an A on the paper, but her professor said, \u201cYou can\u2019t sue a corporation for human rights abuses in foreign countries.\u201d To which Redford responded, \u201cWhy not? The law is there to be changed, and you\u2019re just saying that because no one\u2019s ever done it before.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

One year later, having co-founded EarthRights, Redford was co-counsel on Doe v. Unocal. It became the first case in which jurisdiction was granted over a corporation for human rights abuses, and when the case ended in a historic settlement, it was the first time a company had to pay for those abuses. <\/span><\/p>\n

The events inspired the award-winning documentary Total Denial<\/i>, which focused on Ka Hsaw Wa \u2014 whom the New York Times<\/i> review called \u201cthe stuff heroes are made of.\u201d Ka Hsaw Wa, an ethnic Karen from Burma, is a human rights activist who was on the forefront of the lawsuit against Unocal. He\u2019s also co-founder of EarthRights and Redford\u2019s husband. They met when she was a law school student interning for Human Rights Watch in Myanmar.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now with two children, the couple travels between their Washington, D.C., headquarters and offices in Myanmar and Thailand. The Chiang Mai, Thailand, location is home to the Mitharsuu Center for Leadership and Justice, which they opened two years ago. The Platinum LEED-certified building is an \u201cecoplex,\u201d housing the organization\u2019s EarthRights School for future leaders, a legal network, and a legal advocacy institute. <\/span><\/p>\n

With the growth of the organization, Redford now oversees EarthRights, identifying strategic new initiatives, selecting cases, and exploring new areas of impact. A second case against the IFC that was running parallel to the Jam suit is now moving forward in the U.S. Supreme Court. In this case, EarthRights claims that the IFC is \u201ccomplicit in widespread violence in Honduras by financing a company notorious for harming and even murdering local farmers,\u201d Redford says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in the United States, she has been going to Florida, Colorado, and coastal communities to learn about the harms and costs those communities are experiencing because of climate change caused by fossil fuel corporations. Redford is specifically concerned with the ways in which indigenous and lower income people are more likely to be affected by climate change.<\/span><\/p>\n

In thinking about her work overall, Redford says, \u201cLet somebody else do the easy cases. We\u2019re a small and nimble <\/span>organization, relatively speaking, so we should take the cases that other groups won\u2019t and blaze a trail.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As an attorney at EarthRights International, Katie Redford \u201990 takes on some of the world’s most powerful organizations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":2138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[447,212,295,113],"coauthors":[388],"class_list":["post-2377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alumni-spotlights","category-alumni-updates","tag-human-rights","tag-international","tag-law","tag-sustainability"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-Cl","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/05\/Katie-Redford-26675.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2377"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2415,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377\/revisions\/2415"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2377"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}