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LOS ANGELES PUBLIC INTEREST LAW JOURNAL
2 L.A. PUB. INT. L.J. 158
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STRIP-MINING AND GRASSROOTS RESISTANCE IN APPALACHIA:
COMMUNITY LAWYERING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
Dean Hill Rivkin & Chris Irwin

Environmental justice campaigns have been a dynamic feature of public interest lawyering for over four decades. During these campaigns, community lawyers, sensitive to the democratic imperatives of their grassroots clients, often employ a viscous blend of legal and nonlegal strategies to achieve their clients’ aims. This article is the story of an environmental justice campaign being waged in the Appalachian mountains of east Tennessee. The campaign seeks to halt the destructive practice of mountaintop removal strip-mining for coal through the
deployment of traditional litigation and more unconventional extrajudicial strategies, both of which are designed to build the voices and power of the groups and communities opposed to mountaintop removal. This case study places this “local” struggle in the context of emerging new public interest lawyering.

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Authors

Dean Hill Rivkin is College of Law Distinguished Professor, University of Tennessee College of Law. A.B. Hamilton College (1968); J.D. Vanderbilt Law School (1971). Professor Rivkin was of counsel in the first Zeb Mountain case.

Chris Irwin is an attorney practicing in Knoxville, TN. B.A. University of Tennessee (1994); J.D. University of
Tennessee College of Law (2006).