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Assessing China’S Environmental Ngo Public Interest Litigation Against The U.S. Citizen Suit Model, Huishihan Wang
Assessing China’S Environmental Ngo Public Interest Litigation Against The U.S. Citizen Suit Model, Huishihan Wang
Dissertations & Theses
This dissertation introduces the U.S. and China’s environmental governance evolution, the background of their private enforcement provisions, including each country’s environmental legislative, administrative, and judicial development before establishing private enforcement. After the introduction, the second section examines the U.S. environmental citizen suits’ origin, environmental movements during the 1960s and 1970s, and pioneer ENGOs’ legal experiences. Statutory provisions are reviewed in various aspects in order to fully present this significant U.S. private enforcement measure. The third section analyzes the trajectory of Chinese ENGO EPIL development, including the provisions and typical actions according to several scattered provisions. Section four compares the theoretical …
The Constitutionality Of Citizen Suit Provisions In Federal Environmental Statutes, Jeffrey G. Miller
The Constitutionality Of Citizen Suit Provisions In Federal Environmental Statutes, Jeffrey G. Miller
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
The Supreme Court’s decisions under the pollution control statutes administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reach startlingly anti-environmental results, but they are explained more by the Court’s overwhelming hostility toward the private enforcement of statutes, rather than an anti-environmental bias. Adding insult to injury, in one of the rare victories for private environmental plaintiffs in those decisions, Justice Kennedy queried whether citizen suits intrude on the President’s Article II executive power and violate the separation of power principles. While other Justices have raised the same concern, Justice Kennedy’s invitation is particularly significant because he is a swing vote in …
Ideological Plaintiffs, Administrative Lawmaking, Standing And The Petition Clause, Karl S. Coplan
Ideological Plaintiffs, Administrative Lawmaking, Standing And The Petition Clause, Karl S. Coplan
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
In the 1992 Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife decision, Justice Scalia declared that business interests subject to regulation had automatic standing to challenge regulations in court, but that where “the plaintiff is not himself the object of the government action or inaction he challenges, standing is not precluded, but it is ordinarily ‘substantially more difficult’ to establish.” This article explores the impact this differential standard for court access has on ideologically-motivated public interest plaintiffs, and suggest heightened scrutiny of standing rules under the Petition Clause of the First Amendment based on the viewpoint differential effect of current standing doctrine. This …
Is Voting Necessary? Organization Standing And Non-Voting Members Of Environmental Advocacy Organizations, Karl S. Coplan
Is Voting Necessary? Organization Standing And Non-Voting Members Of Environmental Advocacy Organizations, Karl S. Coplan
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This article will examine the law of standing, and specifically, the conflicting decisions concerning the importance of voting rights in order to establish organizational standing. The article concludes that voting rights should not be essential to the assertion of representational standing. Nevertheless, the article will also consider alternate forms of organization that will improve an organization's chances of establishing representational standing, while addressing the concerns that lead organizations to avoid a voting membership in the first place.
The Law Of Words: Standing, Environment, And Other Contested Terms, David N. Cassuto
The Law Of Words: Standing, Environment, And Other Contested Terms, David N. Cassuto
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167 (2000), exposes fundamental incoherencies within environmental standing doctrine, even while it ostensibly makes standing easier to prove for plaintiffs in environmental citizen suits. According to Laidlaw, an environmental plaintiff needs only to show personal injury to satisfy Article III's standing requirement; she need not show that the alleged statutory violation actually harms the environment. This Article argues that Laidlaw's distinction between injury to the plaintiff and harm to the environment is nonsensical. Both the majority and dissent in Laidlaw incorrectly assume that there exists an objective …
Direct Environmental Standing For Chartered Conservation Corporations, Karl S. Coplan
Direct Environmental Standing For Chartered Conservation Corporations, Karl S. Coplan
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This article suggests that, as an antidote to the ever-tightening restrictions on individual environmental standing, a state may charter a not-for-profit corporation organized to protect a particular environmental resource, giving the corporation a non-exclusive portion of the State's interest in enforcing applicable environmental protections. The dichotomy between not-for-profit organizations that may litigate only as the representative of individual members' interests, and business corporations that assert their own direct economic interests, may seem natural to our late-twentieth-century sensibility, but is not founded in original intent. The framers of Article III, which grants jurisdiction over “cases and controversies” to the federal courts, …
The Standing Of Citizens To Enforce Against Violations Of Environmental Statutes In The United States, Jeffrey G. Miller
The Standing Of Citizens To Enforce Against Violations Of Environmental Statutes In The United States, Jeffrey G. Miller
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Judicial actions by private citizens have played a critical role in the development and enforcement of federal environmental law in the United States over several decades. The courts' general receptivity to the standing of private environmental plaintiffs has made that role possible. A troika of Supreme Court decisions on standing in environmental cases authored by Scalia J over the last decade had eroded that general receptivity, casting doubt on the continued vitality of private actions in developing and implementing environmental law. The Court's recent decision in Friends of the Earth Inc v Laidlaw Environmental Services halts this erosion. To explain …
Refracting The Spectrum Of Clean Water Act Standing In Light Of Lujan V. Defenders Of Wildlife, Karl S. Coplan
Refracting The Spectrum Of Clean Water Act Standing In Light Of Lujan V. Defenders Of Wildlife, Karl S. Coplan
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
First, this article will review the impetus and purposes for the Clean Water Act of 1972, including its citizen suit provision, particularly as these purposes relate to the elimination of specific harm or causation requirements in enforcement actions under its provisions. Second, this article will briefly review the basic elements of Article III standing requirements as enunciated by the Supreme Court, and the development of Supreme Court standing doctrine in environmental cases leading up to and including the Defenders of Wildlife decision. Then the article will survey the various approaches courts have taken in applying Article III standing doctrine to …