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A Functional Approach To Risks And Uncertainties Under Nepa, Todd Aagaard
A Functional Approach To Risks And Uncertainties Under Nepa, Todd Aagaard
Todd S Aagaard
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) mandates that federal agencies evaluate the environmental impacts of their proposed actions. This requires agencies to make ex ante predictions about environmental consequences that often involve a significant degree of factual risk or uncertainty. Considerable controversy exists regarding how agencies should address such risks and uncertainties. Current NEPA law adopts a largely ad hoc approach that lacks coherence and analytical rigor. Some environmentalists and legal scholars have called for a greater emphasis on worst-case analysis in environmental planning, especially after the recent Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the meltdowns …
Regulatory Overlap, Overlapping Legal Fields, And Statutory Discontinuities, Todd S. Aagaard
Regulatory Overlap, Overlapping Legal Fields, And Statutory Discontinuities, Todd S. Aagaard
Todd S Aagaard
Lawmakers and scholars alike criticize regulatory overlap on the ground that giving administrative agencies overlapping jurisdiction leads to duplicative or conflicting regulation which is inefficient and unduly burdensome. This Article challenges this orthodox account of regulatory overlap through examination of six case studies in which the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have managed their jurisdictional overlap so as to create regulatory synergy rather than dysfunction. Although this Article is not the first to argue that regulatory overlap may improve the effectiveness of regulatory programs, the case studies examined here highlight two important aspects of regulatory …