MARESUNEX Seminar | A National Energy Emergency in a Globalized Economy: The Law of Modern Mining Supply Chains

Join professors Peter Mullner & Stephen Crowley for our weekly Materials Resource Sustainability Nexus (MARESUNEX) seminar series, held Tuesdays at 3:00 p.m. on Zoom. Open to the public.

This week, Faith Quigley from the University of Idaho, College of Law will give her talk titled, FA National Energy Emergency in a Globalized Economy: The Law of Modern Mining Supply Chains.

This talk gives students a high-level overview of how modern mining supply chains work and why so many minerals used in the United States are mined overseas. It explains how environmental laws of the 1970s, such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, increased regulation in the United States and pushed many mining companies to shift operations to cheaper, less regulated jurisdictions abroad. It also explores why U.S. companies often mine overseas while foreign companies pursue projects within the United States. Using current examples and the discussion around a “national energy emergency,” the presentation asks students to think about the tradeoffs between domestic and global supply chains. It encourages them to consider these issues from corporate, community, government, and environmental perspectives, and to ask whether critical mineral supply chains could—or should—become more domestic, including in places like Idaho.

Faith Quigley is a third-year law student at the University of Idaho College of Law. She is currently spending her final semester in the Semester-in-Practice program at the United States District Court for the District of Idaho in Judge B. Lynn Winmill’s chambers. She is also a legal intern for Idaho State Representative Annie Henderson Haws (D-16), co-leads a pediatric cancer/air quality initiative at TerraGraphics International Foundation (TIFO) as a legal intern, works in the College of Law’s Criminal Appellate Legal Aid Clinic, and serves as a research assistant to several professors for projects involving international human rights law, criminal procedure, and statutory interpretation.
Faith is active in academic scholarship and writes on mining, climate, and related corporate governance issues. She will sit for the Idaho Bar Exam this summer and will join the Idaho Attorney General’s Office Civil Litigation & Constitutional Defense Division as a Civil Litigation Fellow before clerking for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Faith did her undergraduate degree in geochemistry and environmental science at Olivet Nazarene University in her hometown in Illinois. She moved to Idaho for the mountains and greatly enjoys running and hiking here!

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