Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Case Of The Speluncean Polluters: Six Themes Of Environmental Law, Policy, And Ethics, J.B. Ruhl
The Case Of The Speluncean Polluters: Six Themes Of Environmental Law, Policy, And Ethics, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Almost as soon as it was invented in the early 1970s, the United States' modern environmental law framework has been the subject of calls for reform. Six divergent reform approaches predominate that debate today, and behind each lies strongly held policy and ethical perspectives. Using the futuristic setting Lon Fuller created in his classic study of legal theory, The Case of the Speluncean Explorers, Professor J.B. Ruhl pits those environmental law approaches against each other as society finds itself on the day of reckoning for the environment in the year 4310 AD. The discovery many centuries earlier of a remarkable …
Thinking Of Environmental Law As A Complex Adaptive System: How To Clean Up The Environment By Making A Mess Of Environmental Law, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This article is the fourth in my series of articles exploring the application of complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory to legal systems. It applies the model built in the three prior installments (in the Duke, Vanderbilt, and UC-Davis law reviews) to the specific context of environmental law. The work describes the subject matter of environmental law as a CAS and explains why environmental law thus must "think like a complex adaptive system" in order to accomplish its objectives.
Participation Run Amok: The Costs Of Mass Participation For Deliberative Agency Decisionmaking, Jim Rossi
Participation Run Amok: The Costs Of Mass Participation For Deliberative Agency Decisionmaking, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article addresses the implications of broad-based participatory reforms for administrative process, with a particular focus on how participation reveals itself in different political-theoretic models of agency governance. The first section of the Article explores participation's value to agency governance. The second section of the Article presents three models of agency governance - expertocratic, pluralist, and civic republican - and discusses participation's importance to each model. The Article then posits a distinction between ordinary and constitutive agency decision-making, and explores how participation affects each for the three distinct models of agency governance. The implications of mass participation are explored in …
The Benefits And Costs Of Regulatory Reforms For Superfund, W. Kip Viscusi, James T. Hamilton
The Benefits And Costs Of Regulatory Reforms For Superfund, W. Kip Viscusi, James T. Hamilton
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The current policy approach used in the Superfund program is a peculiar halfway house. EPA devotes substantial effort to identifying chemicals at a site and ascertaining their potential risks. It also assesses the costs of a range of remedies in considerable detail. However, many key elements are missing in the agency's analyses. There is no explicit consideration of the size of the population at risk. Risks to a single individual have the same weight as risks to a large exposed population. Actual and hypothetical exposures to chemicals receive equal weight so that risks to a person who, in the future, …