Kyoto at the Local Level: Federalism and Translocal Organizations of Government Actors (TOGAS)

• Date: 01 August 2010
• Author: Judith Resnik, Joshua Civin, and Joseph Frueh

40 ELR 10768 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 8-2010

A R T I C L E

Kyoto at the Local Level: Federalism

and Translocal Organizations of

Government Actors (TOGAS)

by Judith Resnik, Joshua Civin, and Joseph Frueh

Judith Resnik is the Arthur Liman Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where she teaches about federalism, courts, procedure,

and local and global interventions to diminish inequalities. Her recent books include 

Borders, and Gender (co-edited with Seyla Benhabib, 2009), and Federal Courts Stories (co-edited with Vicki C. Jackson, 2009).

Joshua Civin is an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. A 2003 graduate of

Yale Law School, he served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and from

1994 to 1997 represented the First Ward on New Haven, Connecticut’s Board of Aldermen.

Joseph Frueh is a recent graduate of Yale Law School and a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth

Circuit. His other publications include e Anders  118 Y L.J. 272

(2008), and  23 Y J.  R. 299 (2006).

I. Changing the Contours of American Law

and of Federalism

During the last decades, domestic policies in the United

States on global warming have been shaped through iterative

interactions among transnational lawmakers, the national

government, and hundreds of subnational entities. Exem-

plary are the activities of the U.S. Conference of Mayors

(USCM), which crafted a Climate Protection Agreement

endorsed by some 800 localities. A s a result, although the

United States has not ratied the Kyoto Protocol on climate

change, localities throughout the country have aliated with

the principles that Kyoto embodies.

is essay, a much-condensed version of a longer article

and a book chapter,1 places translocal action on climate

change in the contexts of t wo more general phenomena—

1. Judith Resnik, Joshua Civin & Joseph Frueh, 

    

, 50 A. L. R. 709 (2008). at article is also the basis for the

chapter, -

, in a book from the University

of Arizona Press (forthcoming in 2010).

subnational importation of “foreign” law and the impact of

translocal organization s on A merican federali sm. Entities

such a s USCM resemble in some respects nongovern men-

tal organizations (NGOs) but gain their political capital

from the fact that their member s a re government ocials

or employees such as mayors, attorneys general, governors,

or legislators. To distinguish such entities from govern-

mental b odies and private sector groups, we oer the term

“transloc al organizations of government actors,” with the

acronym “TOG As.”

Although a small body of social science literature has

begun to address TOGAs,2 much of what TOGAs do is inter-

esting and underexplored, both empirically and normatively.

TOGAs are deeply federalist, in the sense that they mirror

the layers of the federal system. Yet, by linking actors across

jurisdictions, TOGAs also prompt reconsideration of some

of the standard precepts of federalism, which are focused on

state-to-state or state-federal interaction more than on coop-

erative interactions that yield eorts such as the Mayors Cli-

mate Protection Agreement. Further, because many TOGAs

are populated by elected leaders, t heir importation of non-

2. See, e.g., D S. A  J F. P, P O A-

  S  L G: A B A O H-

 Y (1994); A M C, G  I

G: I L   F S (1995);

D H. H, W G C  W: G-

, M,  I L (1974).

 atifying Kyoto at the Local

Level: Sovereigntism, Federalism, and Translocal Organizations of

Government Actors (TOGAs), was originally published at 50 A.

L. R. 709 (2008)       



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