Biography

Professor of Law

J.D., Howard University School of Law, Merit Fellow
PH.D., Emory University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Woodruff Scholar
M.T.S., Candler School of Theology, Emory University, with honors
B.S.,  Pennsylvania State University  

Biography

Dr. Carlton Waterhouse is an international expert on environmental law and environmental justice, as well as reparations and redress for historic injustices. In 2021, he was appointed by President Joe Biden in the role of Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Land and Emergency Management at the United States Environmental Protection Agency and nominated to the United States Senate to serve as the Assistant Administrator for the Office. During his two years serving in the Biden-Harris Administration, he oversaw the nation’s programs for toxic waste site remediation, community revitalization and redevelopment through contaminated site cleanup, hazardous and solid waste materials management, chemical plant safety, and emergency response to toxic spills, fires, and explosions. He lectures globally on climate justice, reparations and reconciliation, and group-based inequality. In 2019, he testified on reparations before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States and in 2018 he completed a Fulbright research fellowship in Brazil examining race and police violence. His views have been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other media outlets. His scholarship includes essays, articles, and book chapters focused on the ethical and legal dimensions of environmental justice and reparations. His forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press explores the historic and contemporary role of the United States Supreme Court in both maintaining and dismantling racial dominance. He is a member of American College of Environmental Lawyers, the International Sustainable Development Research Society, a board member of the Environmental Law Institute, and a past board member of the Natural Resources Defense Council. He sits on the National Academy of Sciences Climate Crossroads Committee and actively participates in national and local organizations protecting civil rights and advancing environmental protection and justice. Using an interdisciplinary approach, he examines critical social issues facing the country and the world. Dr. Waterhouse is a Professor of Law and the founding director of the Environmental and Climate Justice Center at the Howard University School of Law.  The center conducts environmental justice research and advocacy that supports local communities confronting environmental injustices and provides policy interventions that promote environmental justice in local, national, and global arenas.

Selected Publications

Magazine Features

Elevating Environmental Protection and Our Priorities, Howard Magazine Spring 2024  at https://magazine.howard.edu/stories/elevating-environmental-protection-and-our-priorities

Journal Articles

Climate Redress Revisited, 110 Iowa Law Review ___ (2025)

Moving Toward Sustainable Environmental Protection and Justice: Lessons from Social Dominance Theory, 15 Journal of Energy and Environmental Law__ (2024) 

Lead: The Latest Federal Actions and Best State Practices, 21 Indiana Health Law Review 355 (2024) 

African American Reparations: A Rough Sketch of the Road to Educational and Economic Restoration, 63 How L. Rev 393 (2020)

Exiting the Road to Resentment: Moving from Reactionary Reconciliation to Social Healing with Justice, World Environment and Island Studies, Vol. 7, No.4 (2017) 

Reparations: The Problem of Social Dominance, World Environment And Island Studies, Vol. 6, No.1 (2016) 

The Lingering Life of Lead Pollution: An Environmental Justice Challenge for Indiana, 49 Indiana L. Rev. 99 (2015) (with Ravay Smith)

Environmental Justice: A Deadly Symptom of Larger Problems, 3 Journal Of Healthcare, Science And The Humanities 102 (2013) 

A Response to Legal Punishment as Civic Ritual, 82 Miss L.J. 59 (2013)

Dr. King's Speech: Surveying the Landscape of Law and Justice in the Speeches, Sermons, and Writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, 30 Law & Ineq. 91 (2012)

Total Recall: Restoring the Public Memory of Enslaved African-Americans and the American System of Slavery Through Rectificatory Justice and Reparations, 14 J. Gender Race & Just. 703 (2011)

No Reparations Without Taxation, 7 Pitt. Tax Rev.159 (2010) (with Andre Smith)

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly: Moral Agency And The Role of Victims in Reparations Programs, 31 U. Pa. J. Int’l. L. 257 (2009)

Follow the Yellow Brick Road: Perusing the Path to Constitutionally Permissible Reparations for Slavery and Jim Crow Era Governmental Discrimination, 62 Rutgers L. Rev. 163 (2009)

Abandon All Hope Ye That Enter? Equal Protection, Title VI, and the Divine Comedy of Environmental Justice, 20 FORDHAM ENVTL. L. REV. 51 (2009)

Books

Race, Social Dominance, and the Supreme Court with Tanya Hernandez, Robert Chang, and Michalyn Steele (forthcoming Cambridge University Press 2025)

Environmental Justice: Law, Policy & Regulation 4rd Edition with Cliff Villa, Nadia Ahmad, Rebecca Bratspies, and Patrice Simms (forthcoming Carolina Academic Press 2025)

Book Chapters

Reparations: The Problem of Social Dominance in Jeju 4.3: Grand Tragedy in the Asia Pacific Context (Jeju National University Press 2016) (invited chapter)

Failed Plans and Planned Failures: The Lower Ninth Ward, Hurricane Katrina, and the Continuing Story of Environmental Injustice, in Hurricane Katrina: America's Unnatural Disaster (Jeremy I. Levitt & Matthew C. Whitaker, eds., U. Neb. Press 2009) (invited chapter)

Environmental Justice, in Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture (ABC-CLIO 2008) (invited contribution)

Reparations, in Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture (ABC-CLIO 2008) (invited contribution)

Engaging Environmental Justice, in Global Economy: Strategies for Home, Community, and World (Westminster John Knox Press 2006) (invited chapter)