Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Identifiability Of Bias In Environmental Law, Shi-Ling Hsu
The Identifiability Of Bias In Environmental Law, Shi-Ling Hsu
Scholarly Publications
The identifiability effect is the human propensity to have stronger emotions regarding identifiable individuals or groups than for abstract ones. The more information that is available about a person, the more likely this person’s situation will influence human decisionmaking. This human propensity has biased law and public policy against environmental and ecological protection because the putative economic victims of environmental regulation are usually easily identifiable workers that lose their jobs, while the beneficiaries—people who avoid a premature death from air or water pollution, people who would be saved by medicinal compounds available only in rare plant and animal species, and …
Amicus Brief Of Economists Ackerman Et Al. In Entergy V. Riverkeepers, Douglas A. Kysar, David M. Driesen
Amicus Brief Of Economists Ackerman Et Al. In Entergy V. Riverkeepers, Douglas A. Kysar, David M. Driesen
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
A group of academic economists filed this amicus brief in a pending Supreme Court case, Entergy v. Riverkeepers. The amicus brief addresses questions pertaining to the nature and limits of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and thus contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate about CBA's role in environmental law. The case raises the question of whether EPA may consider CBA in writing standards based on the "best technology available for minimizing environmental impacts" from intake of water to cool industrial facilities. This intake kills fish and disrupts eco-systems. The brief explains that cost-benefit balancing may be inappropriate for an agency implementing foundational …
Risk Equity: A New Proposal, Matthew D. Adler
Risk Equity: A New Proposal, Matthew D. Adler
All Faculty Scholarship
What does distributive justice require of risk regulators? Various executive orders enjoin health and safety regulators to take account of “distributive impacts,” “equity,” or “environmental justice,” and many scholars endorse these requirements. But concrete methodologies for evaluating the equity effects of risk regulation policies remain undeveloped. The contrast with cost-benefit analysis--now a very well developed set of techniques --is stark. Equity analysis by governmental agencies that regulate health and safety risks, at least in the United States, lacks rigor and structure. This Article proposes a rigorous framework for risk-equity analysis, which I term “probabilistic population profile analysis” (PPPA). PPPA is …