Digital Commons Network^™

Community Empowerment In Decarbonization: Nepa’S Role, Wyatt G. Sassman

Washington Law Review

This Article addresses a potential tension between two ambitions for the transition to clean energy: reducing regulatory red-tape to quickly build out renewable energy, and leveraging that build-out to empower low-income communities and communities of color. Each ambition carries a different view of communities’ role in decarbonization. To those focused on rapid build-out of renewable energy infrastructure, communities are a potential threat who could slow or derail renewable energy projects through opposition during the regulatory process. To those focused on leveraging the transition to clean energy to advance racial and economic justice, communities are necessary partners in the key decisions …

Inquiry Into The Implementation Of Bush’S Executive Order 13211 And The Impact On Environmental And Public Health Regulation, Elizabeth Ann Glass Geltman, Gunwant Gill, Miriam Jovanovic

Publications and Research

Executive Order 13211, promulgated in 2001, requires the federal government to consider the impact of federal action on energy independence as part of the George W. Bush’s National Energy Policy. This law review examines whether EO 13211 was used to curtail environmental protection and natural resource conservation. The article begins with a review of the procedure required of federal agencies under EO 13211 and its associated documents. The paper then examines case law and published federal rulemaking proceedings and examines how federal agencies apply tests to evaluate the potential energy effect. The study concludes that EO 13211 strikes a reasonable …

Environmental Regulation Going Retro: Learning Foresight From Hindsight, Jonathan B. Wiener, Daniel L. Ribeiro

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Designing Co2 Performance Standards For A Transitioning Electricity Sector: A Multi-Benefits Framework, Jonas J. Monast, David Hoppock

Faculty Scholarship

A significant transition is underway within the electricity sector due to several market forces, retirement of certain plants, and regulatory pressures. There is notable overlap between available strategies for mitigating electricity sector risks and potential compliance strategies for states under the Clean Power Plan. This overlap presents regulators with an opportunity to pursue strategies that help manage the transition occurring in the electricity sector and achieve greenhouse gas reductions required under the Clean Power Plan, particularly in the areas of end-use energy efficiency and additional renewable power generation.

Land Management, U.S. Bureau Of, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides a historical overview and current assessment of the role played by the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management in its ownership of federal lands in western states and its efforts to balance economic development of natural resources and conservation of these resources on these lands.

Cross-Border Trucking: An Analysis Of The Limited Extent Of Agency Authority And The Potential For Detrimental Environmental Results As Illustrated By Department Of Transportation V. Public Citizen, Stephanie Rudell

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Toward A Sustainable Future: An Environmental Agenda For The Second Term Of The Obama Administration, David M. Uhlmann

Other Publications

Much was at stake in the Presidential election of 2012, which was marked by heated debate over the trajectory of the economy, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, and the fat of the President's health care plan. The candidates disagreed about nearly every issue from foreign policy and the war on terror to a woman's right to choose and same-sex marriage. Lost amid the din and never mentioned in the Presidential debates or most of the campaign speeches was another divisive topic: how our environmental laws and policies should address global climate change and chart a sustainable future for …

Environmental Deliberative Democracy And The Search For Administrative Legitimacy: A Legal, Positivism Approach, Michael Ray Harris

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The failure of regulatory systems over the past two decades to lessen the environment degradation associated with modern human economic output has begun to undermine the legitimacy of environmental lawmaking in the United States and around the world. Recent scholarship suggests that reversal of this trend will require a breach of the environmental administrative apparatus by democratization of a particular kind, namely the inclusion of greater public discourse within the context of regulatory decision-making. This Article examines this claim through the lens of modern legal positivism. Legal positivism provides the tools necessary to test for and identify the specfic structural …

Nepa In The Hot Seat: A Proposal For An Office Of Environmental Analysis, Aliza M. Cohen

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Judicial deference under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) can be problematic. It is a well-established rule of administrative law that courts will grant a high degree of deference to agency decisions. They do this out of respect for agency expertise and policy judgment. This deference is applied to NEPA lawsuits without acknowledging the special pressures that agencies face while assessing the environmental impacts of their own projects. Though there is a strong argument that these pressures undermine the reasons for deferential review, neither the statute nor the courts have provided plaintiffs with adequate means to remedy this problem. Agency …

Slides: Land Use Planning, Ann Morgan

The Past, Present, and Future of Our Public Lands: Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Public Land Law Review Commission’s Report, One Third of the Nation’s Land (Martz Summer Conference, June 2-4)

Presenter: Ann Morgan, Vice President, The Wilderness Society (Denver, CO)

4 slides

Climbing Mount Mitigation: A Proposal For Legislative Suspension Of Climate Change "Mitigation Litigation", J. B. Ruhl

Washington and Lee Journal of Energy, Climate, and the Environment

No abstract provided.

Public Choice And Environmental Policy: A Review Of The Literature, Christopher H. Schroeder

Faculty Scholarship

This paper is a draft of a chapter for a forthcoming book, Research Handbook in Public Law and Public Choice, edited by Daniel Farber and Anne Joseph O'Connell, to be published by Elgar. It reviews the public choice literature on environmental policy making, first generally and then with respect to four fundamental environmental policy questions: (1) whether or not government action is warranted; (2) if it is, the scope and stringency of the government action, including the manner in which a bureaucracy will implement and enforce any statutory standards; (3) the level of government that assumes responsibility; and (4) the …

Climate Change And The Clean Air Act, Lisa Heinzerling

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Massachusetts v. EPA, petitioners - twelve states, three cities, an American territory, and numerous health and environmental groups - have asked the Supreme Court to hold that the Clean Air Act gives EPA the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles and that EPA may not decline to exercise this power based on statutorily irrelevant factors. The problem petitioners ultimately seek to address - climate change - is unique in its scope and complexity. But the legal issues before the Court in Massachusetts v. EPA are neither particularly grand nor particularly complex. They are the kinds of …

Management-Based Strategies For Improving Private Sector Environmental Performance, Cary Coglianese, Jennifer Nash

All Faculty Scholarship

Improvements in environmental quality depend in large measure on changes in private sector management. In recognition of this fact, government and industry have begun in recent years to focus directly on shaping the internal management practices of private firms. New management-based strategies can take many forms, but unlike conventional regulatory approaches they are linked by their distinctive focus on management practices, rather than on environmental technologies or emissions targets. This article offers the first sustained analysis of both public and private sector initiatives designed specifically to improve firms' environmental management. Synthesizing the results of a conference of leading scholars and …

The Epa's Hpv Challenge Program: A Tort Liability Trap?

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Clean Air Act And The Constitution, Lisa Heinzerling

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the summer of 1997, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) strengthened the air quality standards for two air pollutants, particulate matter and ozone, based on mounting scientific evidence of the harmfulness of these pollutants at levels allowed by the existing standards. With respect to particulate matter (PM), the agency found that numerous epidemiological studies had established an association between PM levels and premature deaths in humans, especially in the elderly population. Indeed, one study on which the EPA relied had found that approximately 60,000 premature deaths in the United States alone could be attributed, annually, to particulate matter. The scientific …

To Protect Developing City By The Enactment Of Local Laws And Regulations, Zilin Wu

New Challenges for Environmental Protection: Second Sino-American Conference on Environmental Law (October 12-13)

13 pages.

Agenda: New Challenges For Environmental Protection: Second Sino-American Conference On Environmental Law, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

New Challenges for Environmental Protection: Second Sino-American Conference on Environmental Law (October 12-13)

Workshop held Sept. 18-19, 1989; conference held Oct. 12-13, 1989, in Boulder, Colorado.

Conference speakers included University of Colorado School of Law professors Daniel Barstow Magraw and Lawrence J. MacDonnell.

Contents of papers from workshop and conference:

To protect developing city by the enactment of local laws and regulations / Wu Zilin -- Legislative control of air pollution & water pollution of the P.R.China / Xiao Longan -- The law of natural conservation in China / Ma Xiang-cong -- 'Weighing environmental risks : EPA's unfinished business', Environment, vol. 30, no. 6, July/August 1988, p. 14-17, 34-39 / Richard Morgenstern, Stuart …

Program Environmental Impact Statements: Review And Remedies, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note discusses the application of NEPA to federal programs. It first analyzes when the courts have required a program impact statement and draws upon that analysis to explain the relative functions of site-specific and program statements. It then examines the appropriate scope of judicial inquiry and the proper standards for reviewing federal program compliance with NEPA. Finally, the Note scrutinizes the types of remedies that may be imposed if a program does not comply with NEPA and proposes a procedure for determining the proper scope of judicial remedies.