Catherine O'Neill
Associate Professor of Law
Room 455, Seattle University School of Law
Phone: (206) 398-4030
E-mail: oneillc@seattleu.edu
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Catherine O'Neill | |
Teaches Environmental Law, Environmental Justice, Natural Resources, Property
B.A. University of Notre Dame 1987. J.D. University of Chicago Law School 1990.
Professor O'Neill was a Ford Foundation Graduate Fellow at Harvard Law School. She came to the Northwest in 1992 as an environmental planner and air toxics coordinator for the Washington State Department of Ecology. From 1994 to1997, she was a Lecturer at the University of Washington School of Law. From 1997 to 2001, Professor O'Neill was Assistant, then Associate Professor at the University of Arizona College of Law. She joined the faculty in 2001.
Professor O’Neill’s research focuses on issues of justice in environmental law and policy; in particular, her work considers the effects of contamination and depletion of fish and other resources relied upon by tribes and their members, communities of color and low-income communities. She has worked with the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council on its Fish Consumption Report; with various tribes in the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes on issues of contaminated fish and waters; and with environmental justice groups in the Southwest on air and water pollution issues. Professor O’Neill has testified before Congress on regulations governing mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. She has also served as a pro bono consultant to the attorneys for the National Congress of American Indians and other tribes in litigation challenging these mercury regulations. Professor O’Neill is a Member Scholar with the Center for Progressive Reform.
Professor O’Neill has published numerous scholarly articles, including Variable Justice: Environmental Standards, Contaminated Fish, and “Acceptable” Risk to Native Peoples (Stanford Environmental Law Journal, 2000); Mercury, Risk, and Justice (Environmental Law Reporter, 2004); and No Mud Pies: Risk Avoidance as Risk Regulation (Vermont Law Review, 2007).