Law Commons^™

The Kimberley Process As A Framework For Regulating Conflict Oil And Gas Sourced From The South China Sea, Jamie Huffman

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

Protecting The Public Benefit: Crafting Precedent For Citizen Enforcement Of Conservation Easements, Sean P. Ociepka

Maine Law Review

In fiscal year 2004, Wal-Mart added 139 new discount stores, supercenters, and “neighborhood markets” to its already significant chain of stores across the United States. Wal-Mart developers submit their proposals to governing town bodies all over the country with the promise that the $20 million construction of a 200,000 square foot store will create 500 new jobs for the local economy, will have a payroll of over $12 million, will increase the tax base of the area, and will provide convenient, affordable shopping for consumers. For these reasons, the big box stores are a hard offer for town planners to …

Clean Air Council V. Pruitt, Oliver Wood

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia granted a motion for summary vacatur against the Environmental Protection Agency after environmental groups challenged the agency’s reconsideration of the Obama-era methane rule under the Clean Air Act. The court held that the EPA unlawfully issued a stay after it reconsidered the rule without proper authorization. The court vacated the EPA’s stay, one example of the Trump Administration unsuccessfully repealing Obama-era rulemaking.

Measuring Brief (Cordelia Lear), Haley Chee, Mahesh Cleveland, Kevin Yolken

Pace Environmental Law Review Online Companion

No abstract provided.

Measuring Brief (Brittain County, New Union), Spencer Newman, Davis Vaughn

Pace Environmental Law Review Online Companion

No abstract provided.

Measuring Brief (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service), David Sheaffer, Caitlin Brown, Jacob Simon

Pace Environmental Law Review Online Companion

No abstract provided.

2017 Bench Memorandum

Pace Environmental Law Review Online Companion

No abstract provided.

2017 National Environmental Moot Court Competition Problem

Pace Environmental Law Review Online Companion

No abstract provided.

Lamarck Revisited: The Implications Of Epigenetics For Environmental Law, Michael P. Vandenbergh, David J. Vandenbergh, John G. Vandenbergh

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

For generations, a bedrock concept of biology was that genetic mutations are necessary to pass traits from one generation to the next, but new developments in genetics are challenging this fundamental assumption. A growing body of scientific evidence demonstrates that chemical alteration of the way a gene functions, whether through exposure to chemicals, foods or even traumatic experiences, may not only affect the exposed individual, but also the individual’s offspring for two generations or more. This interaction between genes and the environment, known as epigenetics, has revolutionized the understanding of how genes are expressed within an individual and how they …

Assessing The Climate Impacts Of U.S. Trade Agreements, Matthew C. Porterfield, Kevin P. Gallagher, Judith Claire Schachter

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Meeting the ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement will require the United States and other major greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters to integrate climate change considerations into all relevant areas of economic policy. The United States, however, has conspicuously failed to do so with regard to international trade negotiations. International trade agreements tend to increase GHG emissions due to the economic effects of trade liberalization, including increases in the scale of economic activity and changes in the composition of the affected economies. Trade agreements can also affect climate change in less quantifiable but potentially more significant ways by restricting the ability …

Energy-Water Nexus, The Clean Power Plan, And Integration Of Water Resource Concerns Into Energy Decision-Making, Sarah Ladin

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Energy regulation in the United States is now at a crossroads. The EPA has begun the process to officially repeal the Clean Power Plan and currently has no plan to replace it with new rulemaking to regulate carbon emissions from the U.S. energy sector. Even though the Clean Power Plan is more or less at its end, its regulatory structure stands as a model of the way decision-makers in the United States regulate the energy sector and the environment. Since the beginning of the modern environmental legal system, decision-makers have chosen to silo the system. Statutes and agencies focus on …

Courting Disaster: Climate Change And The Adjudication Of Catastrophe, R. Henry Weaver, Douglas A. Kysar

Notre Dame Law Review

Do we court disaster by stretching the bounds of judicial authority to address problems of massive scale and complexity? Or does disaster lie in refusing to engage the jurisgenerative potential of courts in a domain of such vast significance? This Article examines global climate change adjudication to shed light on these questions, focusing particularly on cases that seek to invoke the norm articulation and enforcement functions of courts. The attempt to configure climate-related harms within such substantive frameworks as tort and constitutional law is fraught with analytical and practical difficulties. Yet the exercise, we argue, is essential. Against the backdrop …

Technology-Based? Cost Factoring In U.S. Environmental Standards, Jamison E. Colburn

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Environmental controls in the United States are often said to be “technology-based” because the polluter’s duties are determined by the available technology for controlling that pollution rather than by the social costs and benefits of doing so. Indeed, this is much of what distinguishes U.S. environmental law post-1970 from that which preceded it. But technology-based standards have in fact weighed the costs of controlling pollution in unique, often obscure ways, yielding an analysis that defies standardization and basic notions of transparency. Often lumped under an umbrella heading called “feasibility” analysis and justified on the grounds that it avoids many of …

Making Bureaucracies Think Distributively: Reforming The Administrative State With Action-Forcing Distributional Review, Kenta Tsuda

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

This Article proposes that agencies analyze the distributional impacts of major regulatory actions, subject to notice-and-comment procedures and judicial review. The proposal responds to the legitimacy crisis that the administrative state currently faces in a period of widening economic inequality. Other progressive reform proposals emphasize the need for democratization of agencies. But these reforms fail to address the two fundamental pitfalls of bureaucratic governance: the “knowledge problem”—epistemic limitations on centrally coordinated decision making—and the “incentives problem”—the challenge of aligning the incentives of administrative agents and their political principals.

A successful administrative reform must address both problems. Looking to the environmental …

Water Security, Rhett B. Larson

Northwestern University Law Review

Climate change, as the dominant paradigm in natural resource policy, is obsolete and should be replaced by the water security paradigm. The climate change paradigm is obsolete because it fails to adequately resonate with the concerns of the general public and fails to integrate fundamental sustainability challenges related to economic development and population growth. The water security paradigm directly addresses the main reasons climate change ultimately matters to most people—droughts, floods, plagues, and wars. Additionally, this new proposed paradigm better integrates climate change concerns with other pressing global sustainability challenges—including that economic development and population growth will require 50% more …

The Detroit Frontier: Urban Agriculture In A Legal Vacuum, Jacqueline Hand, Amanda Gregory

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Natural Capital Crisis In Southern U.S. Cities, Blake Hudson

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Small Sustainability Supply: How Small Business And Lean Manufacturing Can Change Supply Chains, Carlos Lopez

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Benefitting From Sustainable Development, Victoria Frappaolo

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Batteries Included: Incentivizing Energy Storage, Lindsay Breslau, Michael Croweak, Alan Witt

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

Distributed Energy Storage (“DES”) technologies that allow households and businesses to store substantial amounts of electricity on site are rapidly advancing and could soon have dramatic impacts on the nation’s electricity generation, transmission, and distribution markets. These technologies could provide numerous benefits, including enhanced energy security, grid stability, and greater support for renewable generation technologies, but several obstacles are slowing their adoption throughout the country. Among these obstacles are stubbornly high manufacturing costs and the potential impacts of DES development on utilities and the traditional energy regulatory framework. Fortunately, policymakers in California, New York, Hawaii, and some other states are …

Appraising The Role Of The Ifc And Its Independent Accountability Mechanism: Community Experiences In Haiti’S Mining Sector, Kate Nancy Taylor

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Green Is Good: How Green Bonds Cultivated Into Wall Street’S Environmental Paradox, Luke Trompeter

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

When the European Investment Bank issued the first green bond in 2007, few imagined this debt instrument would attract mainstream investors. Designed to finance projects ranging from climate change prevention to clean transportation development, green bonds were geared for socially responsible investors concerned with our planet’s sustainability. However, by 2015, green bonds were issued by major corporations like Apple and municipalities like New York City at a record $40 billion. Major players on Wall Street have taken notice and look to cash in on the rapidly growing green bond market. With this new influx of investment and the bonds’ tax-exempt …

About Sdlp

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note, Kimberly Reynolds, Ryan Schmidt

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Can The Eu Carbon Tax The U.S. In Retaliation?, Annum Rashedi

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Regional Disputes: It Is Not Just Ground Beef, Nicholas W. Laneville

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Fighting The Wrong Fight: Why The Mlp Parity Act Is A Misguided Attempt At Achieving Renewable Energy Capital Raising Parity, David Powers

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

The Paris Agreement And The International Trade Regime: Considerations For Harmonization, Charles E. Di Leva, Xiaoxin Shi

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Never For-Gatt: What Recent Tbt Decisions Reveal About The Appellate Body’S Analysis Of Environmental Regulation Under The Wto Agreements, Ravi Soopramanien

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

Few environmentalists have positive things to say on the impact of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the environment. WTO legal obligations are frequently cited as the most significant impediment to a range of environmental initiatives, including notably meaningful international coordination to combat climate change, particularly through carbon tax initiatives, and imposition of electronic waste disposal export bans. In this vein, adverse findings of WTO dispute panels on environmental conservation measures tend to attract the ire of international civil society. The tensions between liberal trade and environmental protection can be traced back to the days of the General Agreement on …

About Sdlp

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.