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Full-Text Articles in Law
Using The Public Natural Resource Management Laws To Improve Water Pollution Anti-Degradation Policies, Sandra Zellmer, Robert Glicksman
Using The Public Natural Resource Management Laws To Improve Water Pollution Anti-Degradation Policies, Sandra Zellmer, Robert Glicksman
Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications
The Clean Water Act’s principal goal is to “restore and maintain” the integrity of the nation's surface water bodies. The Act’s adoption was spurred largely by the perception that unchecked pollution had caused the degradation of those waters, making them unsuitable for uses such as fishing and swimming. At the time Congress passed the statute, however, some lakes, rivers, and streams had water quality that was better than what was needed to support these uses. An important question was whether the statute would limit discharges with the potential to impair these high quality waters. EPA’s anti-degradation policy sought to ensure …
The Supreme Court's Anti-Retaliation Principle, Richard E. Moberly
The Supreme Court's Anti-Retaliation Principle, Richard E. Moberly
Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications
In five cases issued during the last five years, the Supreme Court interpreted statutory anti-retaliation provisions broadly to protect employees who report illegal employer conduct. These decisions conflict with the typical understanding of this Court as pro-employer and judicially conservative. In a sixth retaliation decision during this time, however, the Court interpreted constitutional anti-retaliation protection narrowly, which fits with the Court’s pro-employer image but diverges from the anti-retaliation stance it appeared to take in the other five retaliation cases. This Article explains these seemingly anomalous results by examining the last fifty years of the Supreme Court’s retaliation jurisprudence. In doing …
Mississippi River Stories: Lessons From A Century Of Unnatural Disasters, Sandi Zellmer, Christine Klein
Mississippi River Stories: Lessons From A Century Of Unnatural Disasters, Sandi Zellmer, Christine Klein
Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the nation pondered how a relatively weak Category 3 storm could have destroyed an entire region. Few appreciated the extent to which a flawed federal water development policy transformed this apparently natural disaster into a “man-made” disaster; fewer still appreciated how the disaster was the predictable, and indeed predicted, sequel to almost a century of similar disasters. This article focuses upon three such stories: the Great Flood of 1927, the Midwest Flood of 1993, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita of 2005. Taken together, the stories reveal important lessons, including the inadequacy of engineered flood …
A Tale Of Two Imperiled Rivers: Reflections From A Post-Katrina World, Sandra Zellmer
A Tale Of Two Imperiled Rivers: Reflections From A Post-Katrina World, Sandra Zellmer
Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications
Hurricanes are a natural, predictable phenomenon, yet the Gulf Coast communities were devastated by the hurricanes of 2005. One year after Hurricane Katrina struck, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers responded to a congressional request for an accounting by admitting culpability for the destruction of New Orleans. Its structural defenses failed not because Congress had authorized only moderate Category 3 protection, which in turn let floodwaters overtop the city's levees, but because levees and floodwalls simply collapsed. The so-called network of federal and local structures was a haphazard system in name only, where floodwalls and levees of varying heights utilized …