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Now, Later, Or Never: Applying Asymmetric Discount Rates In Nuisance Remedies And Federal Regulations, Yang Wang

Michigan Law Review

Part I of this Note reviews recent literature on the need for asymmetric discount rates in cost-benefit analysis. It observes that even though scholars disagree on the precise value of the appropriate discount rate, many agree that future costs and benefits must be discounted at different rates. Part II then constructs a simple model, consisting of two activities competing for the same resource, and analyzes the consequences of asymmetric discounting under this model. This Part proposes that, to maximize the joint social utility, the resource should be time divided between the competing activities rather than permanently allocated to one or …

Is The Clean Air Act Unconstitutional?, Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

This Article deals with two linked questions. The first involves the future of the Clean Air Act. The particular concern is how the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") might be encouraged, with help from reviewing courts, to issue better ambient air quality standards, and in the process to shift from some of the anachronisms of 1970s environmentalism to a more fruitful approach to environmental protection. The second question involves the role of the nondelegation doctrine in American public law, a doctrine that shows unmistakable signs of revival. I will suggest that improved performance by EPA and agencies in general, operating in …

Revitalizing Environmental Federalism, Daniel C. Esty

Michigan Law Review

Politicians from Speaker Newt Gingrich to President Bill Clinton, cheered on by academics such as Richard Revesz, are eagerly seeking to return authority over environmental regulation to the states. In the European Union, localist opponents of environmental decisionmaking in Brussels rally under the banner of "subsidiarity." And in debates over international trade liberalization, demands abound for the protection of "national sovereignty" in environmental regulation. All of these efforts presume that a decentralized approach to environmental policy will yield better results than more centralized programs. This presumption is misguided. While the character of some environmental concerns warrants a preference for local …

Environmental Tqm: Anatomy Of A Pollution Control Program That Works!, E. Donald Elliott

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Total Quality Management: A Framework for Pollution Prevention by Quality Environmental Management Subcommittee, President's Commission on Environmental Quality

Limitations Of Sovereign Immunity Under The Clean Water Act: Empowering States To Confront Federal Polluters, Corinne Beckwith Yates

Michigan Law Review

This Note considers whether civil penalties that states impose on federal agencies for violations of NPDES permits arise under federal law and thus are covered by the Clean Water Act's waiver of sovereign immunity - an issue the Supreme Court is scheduled to address during the 1991 term. Part I outlines the history of the Clean Water Act, discussing Supreme Court decisions and statutory amendments that affect the sovereign immunity provision. Part II explains the mechanics of the NPDES state permit process and examines, through analysis of statutory provisions, the degree of control retained by the EPA over individual states …

In The Regulation Of Manmade Carcinogens, If Feasibility Analysis Is The Answer, What Is The Question?, Christopher H. Schroeder

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Environmentally Induced Cancer and the Law by Frank B. Cross

The International Law Of Pollution: Protecting The Global Environment In A World Of Sovereign States, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The International Law of Pollution: Protecting the Global Environment in a World of Sovereign States by Allen L. Springer

Compliance Without Coercion, Albert J. Reiss Jr.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Environment and Enforcement: Regulation and the Social Definition of Pollution by Keith Hawkins

Love Canal: Science, Politics, And People, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Love Canal: Science, Politics, and People by Adeline Gordon Levine

Relaxation Of Implementation Plans Under The 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments, David P. Currie

Michigan Law Review

This Article probes the convoluted ameliorative provisions of the 1977 Amendments in three parts. Section I deals with delayed compliance orders - orders granted to stationary sources unable to meet the statutory deadlines for compliance. Section 113( d) is the fountainhead provision, and besides a general provision for delayed compliance, it also contains specific provisions for sources unable to comply due to retirement of present facilities, due to investment in innovative facilities with the promise of greater pollution reduction in the future or due to government orders to convert from cleaner fuels to coal.

Section II analyzes two specific relief …

Organized Labor, The Environment, And The Taft-Hartley Act, James C. Oldham

Michigan Law Review

The legal issues inherent in treating out-plant pollution under the Taft-Hartley Act cannot be fully evaluated without a realistic appreciation of practical considerations and industrial experience. For this reason, considerable empirical information has been collected from a variety of sources. The examination and evaluation of this data will precede the legal analysis. The data, it is hoped, will resolve two questions: What is the effect of out-plant pollution on the workers, and what has been the response of labor unions to date?

Effective Pollution Control In Industrialized Countries: International Economic Disincentives, Policy Responses, And The Gatt, Frederic L. Kirgis Jr.

Michigan Law Review

It is generally recognized that efforts toward meaningful pollution control by an industrialized nation or group of nations raise economic problems at the international level. Discussion has touched upon the balance of trade and the effects for developing countries. Yet there seems to have been little attempt to analyze how these problems will manifest themselves and how they may be resolved within the current international legal-economic ordering system. This Article cannot deal with them all, but will examine closely the international competitive disincentives to truly effective pollution-control efforts in the industrialized countries, where environmental imperatives bear heavily on national decision-makers. …

Controlling Great Lakes Pollution: A Study In United States-Canadian Environmental Cooperation, Richard B. Bilder

Michigan Law Review

In this context, a study of the proposed Agreement and, more particularly, of the long history of developing United States-Canadian cooperation that preceded it may be of use. First, this United States-Canadian experience offers guidance for the solution of some of the specific problems that programs for international environmental cooperation may face: questions of framework and approach; institutional organization, function, and authority; determination of objectives; apportionment of burdens; coordination; and implementation. Second, at a time when international discussion has focused principally on global approaches to the solution of environmental problems, it calls attention to the important, if less dramatic, contribution …

The Canadian Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act: New Stresses On The Law Of The Sea, Richard B. Bilder

Michigan Law Review

The Canadian Pollution Prevention Act is of interest in several respects. It opens a new round in the historic and multifaceted struggle over freedom of the seas. It raises complex questions of international law and policy regarding the legal regime of Arctic waters, the concept of contiguous zones, the status of waters within archipelagoes, and the doctrines of innocent passage and international straits. It illustrates both the perception of an increasing number of coastal states that existing international law and international arrangements are inadequate to protect their legitimate interests, and the strong pressures within such states for unilateral action to …

Foreword: Environmental Quality, The Courts, And The Congress, Henry M. Jackson

Michigan Law Review

In America, we have traditionally equated progress with gross national product, with the accumulation of personal goods, with economic development, and with miles of roads, numbers of kilowatts, and acres of land. We have been easily impressed by quantitative measures of who we are as a people and where we are going as a nation.

In many respects the ways we measure progress reflect our society's traditional emphasis on the accumulation of material goods and the expansion of commerce and technology. Our success in achieving these goals is apparent from the statistics. We produce more than ten million automobiles annually. …

Motor Vehicle Air Pollution: State Authority And Federal Pre-Emption, David P. Currie

Michigan Law Review

The problem of state authority over motor vehicle air pollution was recently highlighted when the Illinois Air Pollution Control Board, for the first time, adopted regulations to deal with vehicle emissions. Those regulations are disappointingly feeble. Except for outlawing visible smoke and for making it unlawful to dismantle pollution control devices, the new rules do nothing but state that the Board may decide to do something in the future about pollution from automobiles.

In attempting to improve upon these regulations, however, one is struck with a sense of considerable futility. Given the present limits of technology and the necessarily legislative …

The Evolution Of The Enforcement Provisions Of The Federal Water Pollution Control Act: A Study Of The Difficulty In Developing Effective Legislation, Frank J. Barry

Michigan Law Review

The Federal Water Pollution Control Act,1 which was originally enacted in 1948 and which has been amended five times from 1956 to 1970, has been the primary federal response to the problem of water pollution. The development of that Act in the past twenty-two years has been a story of delayed and inadequate response to the increasing problems of water pollution. The development of the Act's enforcement provisions is particularly representative of those problems. It is the purpose of this Article to examine that development, to point out the shortcomings in the Act, and to analyze the effort that has …

Legal Aspects Of A Federal Water Quality Surveillance System, Jon T. Brown, Wallace L. Duncan

Michigan Law Review

Collection of water quality data is also important for the purpose of determining the present and future needs for water resources and for the purpose of determining the proper allocation of limited financial resources among those needs. In addition, such data are necessary in order to conduct research studies and in order to determine water quality trends for the purposes of long-range planning.

Perhaps the best way to collect such data would be to establish a national surveillance system designed to monitor the quality of the nation's water resources. Such a national system is currently under consideration by the Federal …

Jurisdiction--Atomic Energy--Federal Pre-Emption And State Regulation Of Radioactive Air Pollution: Who Is The Master Of The Atomic Genie?, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Pending litigation between the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and Northern States Power Company presents a potential federal-state conflict over the right of a state to impose upon operators of nuclear power plants more exacting pollution control standards than those required by regulations of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The AEC issued Northern States Power Company a permit to construct a nuclear power generating plant in Monticello, Minnesota. The regulations under which that permit was issued place a ceiling on the amount of radioactive effluents which can be discharged into the air during the course of the plant's operations. But under …

Equity And The Eco-System: Can Injunctions Clear The Air?, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

On April 22, 1970, a number of private groups in the United States sponsored "Earth Day," an attempt to turn the attention of the population to matters of environmental concern. The dramatically favorable response to the idea of "Earth Day" suggests the extent to which more and more persons are becoming worried about ecological destruction. One of the methods of preventing that destruction, the obtaining of injunctions against industrial polluters, is the subject of this Comment. The central focus of this Comment is upon the injunction as a means of preventing air pollution, but most of the substance is equally …