Natural disasters are becoming more common and destructive. There is a critical need to build accessible legal services for vulnerable populations that suffer disproportionately from natural disasters. Law schools, legal clinics, and law professors are well-positioned to serve vulnerable and marginalized communities and can address the issues of poverty and race that exacerbate the harm caused by natural disasters. Access to justice and civil legal aid after natural disasters should be rooted in preparedness and planning before the disaster. Understanding the nature of natural disasters, the ecosystem of response systems, existing networks, common legal issues, and the typical arc of recovery will help law schools, legal clinics, and lawyers prepare and plan for response. The models and lessons discussed in this chapter may help provide increased post disaster legal services to vulnerable people to empower them with confidence and tools to serve their communities. This chapter builds on lessons learned from previous natural disasters and offers information and insights on responsive program design, professionalism, and disaster response systems. Building a framework for institutional responses in the legal academy can advance and improve access to justice for vulnerable communities recovering after a disaster so that they can survive, rebuild and return home.

This chapter traces the evolution of federal disaster law and policy in the United States from the nation’s founding to the present. While many excellent histories of related topics already exist, this chapter will focus on three key aspects of this evolution. First, the chapter illustrates how the current federal policy structure is less a comprehensive system than an ad hoc agglomeration of policies and programs built on disparate experiences including natural disasters, wartime preparation, economic crises, and others. Second, the chapter explores the outsize role that political considerations, as opposed to best practices drawn from recovery management experiences, have played in shaping current federal disaster response and recovery approaches. Finally, recent events, including Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Maria, are explored to illustrate the tradeoffs inherent in the United States’ federated system of disaster response.

Disasters in the United States require coordinated responses by many levels of government and necessitate many areas of technical assistance and expertise. Since at least Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it has become increasingly evident that effective disaster response requires legal assistance and expertise. This need for legal expertise became particularly prominent in the Covid-19 crisis of 2020, where federal, state, tribal, and other governments took extraordinary measures to contain the pandemic, raising questions about the legal authority and limits of such measures. To help prepare lawyers for engagement in future disasters, this chapter reviews basic tenets of disaster law, including governing statutes such as the federal Stafford Act and foundational theories such as the Disaster Cycle. The chapter also introduces useful materials, such as the National Response Framework, and key operational concepts, such as the Incident Command System.