Digital Commons Network^™

Modernization Of The Columbia River Treaty: An Opportunity For Idaho, Barbara Cosens

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No abstract provided.

Wrongful Benefit & Arctic Drilling, Nicolas Cornell, Sarah E. Light

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The law contains a diverse range of doctrines — “slayer rules” that prevent murderers from inheriting, restrictions on trade in “conflict diamonds,” the Fourth Amendment’s exclusion of evidence obtained through unconstitutional search, and many more — that seem to instantiate a general principle that it can be wrong to profit from past harms or misconduct. This Article explores the contours of this general normative principle, which we call the wrongful benefit principle. As we illustrate, the wrongful benefit principle places constraints both on whether anyone should be permitted to exploit ethically tainted goods, and who may be permitted to profit …

Beyond Zero-Sum Environmentalism, Jessica Owley, Shalanda Baker, Robin Kundis Craig, John Dernbach, Keith Hirokawa, Sarah Krakoff, Melissa Powers, Shannon Roesler,, Jonathan Rosenbloom, J. B. Ruhl, Jim Salzman, Inara Scott, David Takacs

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Environmental law and environmental protection are often portrayed as requiring trade offs: "jobs versus environment," "markets versus regulation," "enforcement versus incentives." In the summer of 2016, members of the Environmental Law Collaborative gathered to consider how environmentalism and environmental regulation can advance beyond this framing to include new constituents and offer new pathways to tackle the many significant challenges ahead. Months later, the initial activities of the Trump Administration highlighted the use of zero-sum rhetoric, with the appointment of government officials and the issuance of executive orders that indeed seem to view environmental issues as in a zero-sum relationship with …

Exploiting Conservation Lands: Can Hydrofracking Be Consistent With Conservation Easements, Jessica Owley, Collin Doane

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No abstract provided.

Regulating Cumulative Risk, Sanne H. Knudsen

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This Article proceeds in four parts. Part I describes how cumulative risk assessments tackle the real-world exposure problems that lie at the heart of public health. It shows how risk science has evolved and why policy, not science, lags behind. Part II then examines why key public health concerns cannot be answered through information disclosure or consumer choice models alone.

Having established that regulatory drivers are needed, Part III begins to examine how to move forward. It does so by looking backward and examining how TSCA and FIFRA have failed historically to provide this critical public health focus despite room …

Chile, The Biobio, And The Future Of The Columbia River Basin, Jerrold A. Long

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No abstract provided.

#Betterrules: The Appropriate Use Of Social Media In Rulemaking, Stephen M. Johnson

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In December 2015, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) use of various social media tools in a rulemaking under the Clean Water Act violated prohibitions in federal appropriations laws against publicity, propaganda, and lobbying. Although academics previously explored whether the use of technology in rulemaking might violate the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), the Paperwork Reduction Act, or the Federal Advisory Committee Act, none predicted that one of the first firestorms surrounding the use of social media in rulemaking would arise out of federal appropriations laws. ...

As the Administrative Conference of the United States …

Local Environmental Regulation In The Mountain West, Stephen R. Miller

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This article takes the opportunity to reflect upon the rapid rise and maturation of local environmental regulation in the Mountain West, which has been one of the country’s fastest growing regions in the last twenty-five years. Section I of this article first offers several reasons why local environmental regulation has become popular over the past several decades in the Mountain West. The article then explores several of the key forms of local environmental regulation to emerge. Section II focuses on those local environmental regulations that address living with and preserving access to the natural environment, both of which are among …

Eating Is Not Political Action, Joshua Galperin, Graham Downey, D. Lee Miller

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Food and environment are cultural stalwarts. Picture the red barn and solitary farmer toiling over fruited plains; or purple mountains majesty reflected in pristine waters. Agriculture and environment are core, distinct, American mythologies that we know are more intertwined than our stories reveal.

To create policy at the interface of such centrally important and overlapping American ideals, there are two options. Passive governance fosters markets in which participants make individual choices that aggregate into inadvertent collective action. In contrast, assertive governance allows the public, mediated through elected officials, to enact intentional, goal oriented policy.

American mythologies of food and environment …

Value Hypocrisy And Policy Sincerity: A Food Law Case Study, Joshua Galperin

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It is tempting to say that in 2017 there is a unique problem of hypocrisy in politics, where words and behaviors are so often in opposition. In fact, hypocrisy is nothing new. A robust legal and psychological literature on the importance of procedural justice demonstrates a longstanding concern with developing more just governing processes. One of the important features of this scholarship is that it does not focus only on the consequences of policymaking, in which behaviors, but not words, are relevant. Instead, it respects the intrinsic importance of fair process, lending credence not only to votes but also to …

Defining And Closing The Hydraulic Fracturing Governance Gap, Joshua Galperin, Grace Heusner, Allison Sloto

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As recent examples in Texas and Colorado have shown, if local governments ban fracking, they risk pushback from state governments. This pushback, in turn, can result in preemption making an outright local ban on fracking self-defeating because it could ultimately result in less local control over the impacts of hydraulic fracturing. Given this potentially self-defeating nature of local fracking bans, local governments should address the impacts of fracking through more traditional local governance mechanisms that do not pose as great a risk to local authority.

On this premise, this Article seeks to make the case for the importance of, and …

Trust Me, I'M A Pragmatist: A Partially Pragmatic Critique Of Pragmatic Activism, Joshua Galperin

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Pragmatism is a robust philosophy, vernacular hand waiving, a method of judicial and administrative decisionmaking, and, more recently, justification for a certain type of political activism. While philosophical, judicial, and administrative pragmatism have garnered substantial attention and analysis from scholars, we have been much stingier with pragmatic activism — that which, in the spirit of the 21st Century’s 140-character limit, I will call “pragtivism.” This Article is intended as an introduction to pragtivism, a critique of the practice, and a constructive framework for addressing some of my critiques.

To highlight the contours of pragtivism, this Article tells the story of …