Law Commons^™

Revitalizing The Presumption Against Preemption To Prevent Regulatory Gaps: A Case Study Of Judicial Tolerance Of Illegal Railroad Waste Transfer Stations, Carter H. Strickland Jr.

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

This article addresses the problem of regulatory gaps that are created through imprecise preemption rulings. It begins with a detailed case study of how railroads were able to enter the highly regulated solid waste industry, to claim that all state oversight is preempted by a federal statute intended to deregulate railroad economics, and to obtain the economic benefits of operating in a regulatory gap. The net result of current preemption doctrine in those cases has been to strip citizens of the power to ensure that waste transfer stations are safe, and this fundamental injustice serves as a backdrop to analyzing …

Are All ‘Legal Dollars’ Created Equal?, Doron Teichman, Yuval Feldman

ExpressO

For several decades law and economic scholars have employed the tools of price theory in order to evaluate an array of legal questions ranging from criminal sanctions to contract remedies. This vast body of literature implicitly assumed that all payments made through the legal system are fungible. In other words, just as a dollar paid for a tomato is identical to a dollar paid for a cucumber, so are a dollar paid as a pollution tax to the government and a dollar paid as compensation to the party injured by the pollution. In this study we challenge this assumption, and …

Using Ethanol As A Fuel To Reenergize Free Trade Area Of The Americas Negotiations, Marcel De Armas

ExpressO

Currently the United States imposes a 2.5 percent ad valorem tax along with a 14.27 cents per liter tax on imported ethanol from countries with normal trade relations under the harmonized tariff schedule. However, the United States exempts many countries from this tariff or reduces the tariff under various free trade agreements or initiatives. The issues that resulted in Doha’s failure also caused FTAA negotiations to temporarily stall since both Brazil and the United States wanted certain FTAA issues negotiated at the WTO level. The United States could initiate this process with a discussion of reducing or eliminating its ethanol …

Jutstice Kennedy And The Environment: Property, States' Rights, And The Search For Nexus, Michael Blumm

ExpressO

Justice Anthony Kennedy, now clearly the pivot of the Roberts Court, is the Court’s crucial voice in environmental and natural resources law cases. Kennedy’s central role was never more evident than in the two most celebrated environmental and natural resources law cases of 2006: Kelo v. New London and Rapanos v. U.S., since he supplied the critical vote in both: upholding local use of the condemnation power for economic development under certain circumstances, and affirming federal regulatory authority over wetlands which have a significant nexus to navigable waters. In each case Kennedy’s sole concurrence was outcome determinative.

Justice Kennedy has …

Resolving Conflicts Between Multilateral Environmental Agreements: The Case Of The Montreal And Kyoto Protocols, Daniel G. Mccabe

ExpressO

The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer are multilateral environmental agreements that regulate the use of chemicals that contribute to climate change and ozone depletion. The Montreal Protocol, however, encourages the replacement of ozone depleting substances with chemicals that contribute to climate change. Likewise, the Kyoto Protocol encourages the production of an ozone depleting substance by allowing companies to profit by destroying the byproduct of its manufacture. This comment attempts to resolve these conflicts through conventional and customary international law. It concludes that the …

Hemp ... Why Not?, Jared B. Kahn

ExpressO

Hemp ... Why Not?

By: Jared Kahn

(Abstract)

Industrial hemp has been utilized as a commodity crop for centuries in the United States, and for millennia throughout the world. Today, the crop is cultivated for industrial uses in thirty countries, but not the United States. United States citizens may import hemp, eat hemp, wear hemp, and do whatever they please with a manufactured hemp product, but nobody grows the valuable crop in the U.S. Several states have legalized industrial hemp cultivation, however, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) interprets the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to prohibit the growing of hemp …

How Do We Deal With This Mess? A Primer For State And Local Governments On Navigating The Legal Complexities Of Debris Issues Following Mass Disasters, Ryan M. Seidemann, Megan K. Terrell, Christopher D. Matchett

ExpressO

The devastation wrought by the 2005 hurricane season brought into bold relief the need for comprehensive debris management plans in the United States. As cleanup efforts commenced following Hurricane Katrina, it became abundantly apparent that the local governments were not prepared to deal with the massive scope of the debris problem.

Disasters will occur. It is not a matter of if, but a matter of when. The entire nation is at risk of being struck by some type of disaster at some time. The best way to deal with the outfall from these disasters is to be prepared for them …