Professor Michael Haber, director of the Community and Economic Development (CED) Clinic co-authored the guide Community Fridges: Legal Questions and Answers with Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, UCLA’s School of Law Food Law and Policy Clinic, and the Sustainable Economies Law Center.
“Community fridges are a form of mutual aid. The community fridge guide builds on the legal guide for mutual aid groups that I wrote in 2020, an academic article on mutual aid I published last year, as well as Sustainable Economies Law Center’s legal guide to mutual aid that also came out in 2020,” he says. “The food law expertise from the food law and policy clinics at Harvard and UCLA add substantial additional depth to our understanding of how mutual aid groups that feed their communities, like community fridges, are regulated.”
Community fridges in recent years have become increasingly popular in places like New York City. The fridges help address the rising issue of food insecurity in communities. As the popularity increases more legal questions have been brought up from community fridge groups.
“The inspiration for the community fridge legal guide came principally from the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, which spent months interviewing community fridge groups in cities across the country on the legal issues they face. The guide contains a link to an online form that will let community fridge groups send us legal questions as they emerge,” says Haber.
The guide has also been a great teaching and learning tool for students in the CED Clinic. Since the guide is a living document where questions can be submitted, students have been tasked with finding answers to those questions.
“We just started our semester in the CED Clinic last week and we have already been researching questions from community fridge groups on questions related to corporate and tax law,” says Hofstra Law 3L Sean Zvi.
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