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The Exoskeleton Of Environmental Law: Why The Breadth, Depth And Longevity Of Environmental Law Matters For Judicial Review, Sanne H. Knudsen

Articles

Environmental law is pragmatic, inevitable, and intentional. In the aggregate, the numerous federal environmental statutes are not simply a patchwork of ad hoc responses or momentary political breakthroughs to isolated public health problems and resource concerns. Together, they are a group of repeated, legislatively-backed commitments to embrace self-restraint for self-preservation.

Self-restraint and discipline are the essence of environmental law. Indeed, if one studies the patterns and repeated choices in environmental law 's many statutory texts, one can start to appreciate environmental law 's indispensable role in society: it serves as an enduring "exoskeleton," a sort of protective armor created over …

Checking In On The Chesapeake: Some Questions Of Design, Jonathan Cannon

University of Richmond Law Review

The Chesapeake Bay Program ("the CBP" or "Program") has been widely celebrated as a model of collaborative management for large multijurisdictional watersheds and for ecosystem management more generally.' In an article published six years ago, I joined in the celebration.2 But recent events warrant consideration of whether restructuring of the program is called for. In this essay, I consider whether greater centralization of decisionmaking for the Bay would address recent criticisms of the Program and better protect the public interest. After evaluating two alternative forms for the Program involving greater centralization, I conclude that major restructuring is not in order. …

Overcoming Collective Action Problems: Enforcement Of Worker Rights, Louise Sadowsky Brock

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In a period of new employment laws, it is important to determine how those laws are enforced, why enforcement of those laws is sometimes limited and how enforcement can be improved. This Note discusses the ways in which the theory of collective action limits enforcement of three employee rights statutes: the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. Enforcement mechanisms such as class action lawsuits, administrative agencies, employee participation groups, and labor unions represent potential methods of overcoming collective action problems. Each method has its benefits, and the three …

Reflections On Group Action And The Law Of The Workplace Symposium: The Changing Workplace, James J. Brudney

Faculty Scholarship

Sixty years after the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was passed, collective action appears moribund. Current analysis burying and praising the NLRA has focused primarily on the changed economic realities of the product and labor markets. Yet there is another story to be told involving a comparable transformation of the legal culture. Relying in part on empirical analysis of court decisions, I argue that changes in federal workplace law over the past thirty years have undermined the concept of group action-in particular collective bargaining-as a preferred means of regulating the employment relationship. These changes are the product of leading institutional …

Review Essay: Sunstein, Statutes, And The Common Law--Reconciling Markets, The Communal Impulse, And The Mammoth State, Peter L. Strauss

Michigan Law Review

The following pages principally address Professor Sunstein's basic argument for building on, rather than defending against, legislative judgments, and so virtually ignore the details of his proposals for statutory interpretation. Part I outlines Sunstein's case for some regulation - the necessary failures of market ordering and the consequent need for a mixed economy in which government regulation intervenes in important ways. Part II addresses Sunstein's decision to tie his analysis to the public law innovations of the New Deal, and suggests ways in which the analysis might be strengthened by attention to earlier struggles and changes - changes in common …