Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Law
Climate Change In The Supreme Court, Lisa Heinzerling
Climate Change In The Supreme Court, Lisa Heinzerling
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Supreme Court confronted the issue of climate change for the first time. The Court held that the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gases and that the agency may not decline to exercise this authority based either on factors not present in the statute or inconclusive gestures toward uncertainty in the science of climate change. I had the privilege of serving as the lead author of the winning briefs in this case. This Article provides an insider's perspective on the choices that went into bringing and …
Human Nature, The Laws Of Nature, And The Nature Of Environmental Law, Richard J. Lazarus
Human Nature, The Laws Of Nature, And The Nature Of Environmental Law, Richard J. Lazarus
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The essay is divided into three parts. Part I considers the ways in which the need for environmental law derives from the tendency of human nature to cause adverse environmental consequences and the ways in which the laws of nature make it more difficult to prevent those consequences absent the imposition of external legal rules. Part II describes how our nation's lawmaking institutions are similarly challenged by the laws of nature. This includes a discussion of how the kinds of laws necessary to bridge the gap between human nature and the laws of nature are systematically difficult for our lawmaking …
Environmental Law And The Supreme Court: Three Years Later, Richard J. Lazarus
Environmental Law And The Supreme Court: Three Years Later, Richard J. Lazarus
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In my Garrison Lecture three years ago, I surveyed the environmental law decisions of the Supreme Court between 1970 and 1999. I commented on which Justices had been more or less influential in shaping the Court's decisions and, even more provocatively (if not foolishly), sought to "score" the individual Justices on their responsiveness to environmental protection concerns based on their votes cast in a subset of those cases. The broader thesis of the lecture, however, was that there is something distinctively "environmental" about environmental law and that the Court's increasing inability to appreciate that dimension was leading to more poorly-reasoned …