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Articles 1 - 30 of 251
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Dormant Commerce Clause As A Way To Combat The Anti-Competitive, Anti-Transmission-Development Effects Of State Right Of First Refusal Laws For Electricity Transmission Construction, Walker Mogen
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
To quickly decarbonize the electricity grid, new sources of renewable energy have to be connected to the grid. To connect these sources of energy to the grid, the rate of construction of new electricity infrastructure must increase quickly. The process to construct new electricity transmission infrastructure, however, is filled with chokepoints that slow its construction. State right of first refusal laws for transmission construction are one the things slowing the build out of the grid. These laws limit which companies can construct new transmission infrastructure to utilities and other companies already operating transmission infrastructure in a state. This Note, using …
Armor Or Withdraw? Likely Litigation And Potential Adjudication Of Shoreland Conflicts Along Michigan's Shifting Great Lake Coasts, Richard K. Norton, Guy A. Meadows, Oday Salim, Matthew Piggins, Phillip Washburn, Lauren Ashley Week
Armor Or Withdraw? Likely Litigation And Potential Adjudication Of Shoreland Conflicts Along Michigan's Shifting Great Lake Coasts, Richard K. Norton, Guy A. Meadows, Oday Salim, Matthew Piggins, Phillip Washburn, Lauren Ashley Week
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Michigan enjoys along its inland seas, the Laurentian Great Lakes, one of the longest coastlines in the U.S. Much of that shoreline is privately owned. Because of a confluence of development pressures and irrepressible physical dynamics, growing numbers of Great Lakes shoreland properties, built on shifting sandy shores, are at heightened risk of loss from coastal storm surge, inundation, erosion, and shoreline recession. In response, property owners are installing extensive hardened shoreline armoring structures like seawalls and revetments to arrest those erosional processes. Those structures, however, will substantially impair, if not ultimately destroy, the state’s natural coastal beaches and other …
Beyond “Big Government”: Toward New Legal Histories Of The New Deal Order’S End, Gabriel L. Levine
Beyond “Big Government”: Toward New Legal Histories Of The New Deal Order’S End, Gabriel L. Levine
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism. By Paul Sabin.
The Particle Problem: Using Rcra Citizen Suits To Fill Gaps In The Clean Air Act, Kurt Wohlers
The Particle Problem: Using Rcra Citizen Suits To Fill Gaps In The Clean Air Act, Kurt Wohlers
Michigan Law Review
While the Clean Air Act has done a substantial amount for the environment and the health of individuals in the United States, there is still much to be done. For all its complexity, the Act has perpetuated systemic inequities and allowed harms to fall more heavily on low-income communities and communities of color. This is no less true for particulate matter pollution, which is becoming worse by the year and is a significant cause of illness and premature death. This Note argues that particulate pollution, traditionally only regulated on the federal level within the ambit of the Clean Air Act, …
Environmental Governance By Contract: The Growing Role Of Supply Chain Contracting, Michael P. Vandenburgh, Patricia A. Moore
Environmental Governance By Contract: The Growing Role Of Supply Chain Contracting, Michael P. Vandenburgh, Patricia A. Moore
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Corporate net zero climate commitments and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies have the potential to bypass barriers to international, national, and subnational government action on climate change and other environmental issues. This Article presents the results of a new empirical study that demonstrates the remarkably widespread use of environmental supply chain contracting requirements. The study finds that roughly 80% of the ten largest firms in seven global sectors include environmental requirements in supply chain contracting, a substantial increase over the 50% reported by a comparable study fifteen years ago. The Article concludes that the prevalence of environmental supply chain …
Taxing Risky Development: A New Tool For Increasing Coastal Resilience, James Daher
Taxing Risky Development: A New Tool For Increasing Coastal Resilience, James Daher
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Coastal overdevelopment in the United States is a persistent issue. Climate change continues to increase the risk of flooding and other damage from natural disasters facing many coastal communities. Yet, development in some of the most at-risk areas has not slowed. Policies at the federal government level have encouraged such development by shifting costs of flood-related property damage from the property owner to taxpayers. At the same time, government actors at all levels are actively trying to protect their coastlines through coastal resilience projects. However, there are not enough funds to protect coastal property, especially at the state and local …
The Public Trust And The Chicago Lakefront: Review Of Kearney & Merrill’S Lakefront: Public Trust And Private Rights In Chicago (Cornell U. Press, 2021), Michael C. Blumm
The Public Trust And The Chicago Lakefront: Review Of Kearney & Merrill’S Lakefront: Public Trust And Private Rights In Chicago (Cornell U. Press, 2021), Michael C. Blumm
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Joseph Kearney and Thomas Merrill’s brilliantly illustrated LAKEFRONT is sure to win American legal history awards for its riveting history of the machinations behind the preservation of the magnificent Chicago lakefront, now dominated by public spaces. The authors weave together a compelling account of how the law affected the development of the post-fire Chicago in the late 19th and 20th centuries—largely made by lawyers and courts and only ratified by legislatures. The book’s title suggests that the story is largely about the public trust doctrine (PTD). But the doctrine is hardly the centerpiece of the authors’ story. What they have …
Evaporating Into Thin Air: The Prosecution Of Air Pollution Crimes During The Trump Administration, Joshua Ozymy, Melissa Jarrell Ozymy
Evaporating Into Thin Air: The Prosecution Of Air Pollution Crimes During The Trump Administration, Joshua Ozymy, Melissa Jarrell Ozymy
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Antagonistic to environmental regulation, the Trump Administration sought to significantly roll back federal clean air law enforcement. Yet, we know very little about the impact of the Administration on air pollution criminal enforcement. Through content analysis of all EPA criminal investigations leading to prosecution, we analyze patterns in charging and sentencing and draw out the broader themes in air pollution prosecutions during this period. Our results show a sizable drop in prosecutions compared to the Obama Administration. Although prosecutors managed to pursue serious crimes involving significant harm and criminal conduct and secure over $2.9 billion in monetary penalties, roughly 160 …
Significant Impacts Under Nepa: The Social Cost Of Greenhouse Gases As A Tool To Mitigate Climate Change, Sydney Hofferth
Significant Impacts Under Nepa: The Social Cost Of Greenhouse Gases As A Tool To Mitigate Climate Change, Sydney Hofferth
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
The increased severity of the impacts of climate change demand a re-evaluation of the legal tools that could combat it. The National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) was passed to force government agencies to account for the environmental impacts of their actions. However, as it exists today, NEPA fails to require agencies to consider how their actions will mitigate or exacerbate climate change. This Note argues that agencies should be required to consider the social cost of the greenhouse gases associated with potential major actions at various stages of NEPA analysis. This change would result in increased transparency and public engagement …
Un-Repeal: Reviving The Arms Control Impact Statements, David A. Koplow
Un-Repeal: Reviving The Arms Control Impact Statements, David A. Koplow
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
From the late 1970s into the early 1990s, U.S. federal law mandated the executive branch to prepare annual analytical documents known as Arms Control Impact Statements (ACIS). These instruments – obviously patterned after the Environmental Impact Statements (EIS), which had been inaugurated only a few years previously – were intended to prod the national security community to undertake more rigorous, multi-dimensional study of major weapons programs, and to provide Congress and the American public with enhanced, timely information about key arms procurement decisions.
However, unlike the EIS process – which rapidly became institutionalized, and which has proliferated to multiple tiers …
Removing The State Opt-Out For Demand Response, Ben Carroll
Removing The State Opt-Out For Demand Response, Ben Carroll
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
In 1935, Congress enacted the Federal Power Act. The Act split jurisdiction over electricity generation and distribution between the Federal and state governments. The Act delegated to the Federal government jurisdiction over interstate wholesales and interstate transmission. The Act gave state governments jurisdiction over intrastate wholesales, intrastate transmission, generation, local distribution, and retail sales. Big, vertically-integrated monopoly utilities dominated the market before and for 60 years after the passage of the Act. However, over time, changes in technology and policy in the wholesale market eroded the dominance of those vertically-integrated monopoly utilities and complicated this jurisdictional bright line.
In 2011, …
Air Pollution As Public Nuisance: Comparing Modern-Day Greenhouse Gas Abatement With Nineteenth-Century Smoke Abatement, Kate Markey
Michigan Law Review
Public nuisance allows plaintiffs to sue actors in tort for causing environmental harm that disrupts the public’s use and enjoyment of the land. In recent years, state and local governments have filed public nuisance actions against oil companies, hoping to hold them responsible for the harm of climate change. Since no plaintiff has prevailed on the merits so far, whether these lawsuits are worth bringing, given the other legal avenues available, remains an open question. This Comment situates these actions in their appropriate historical context to show that these lawsuits are neither unprecedented nor futile. In particular, it examines the …
Eia Directive Procedural Guarantees As Substantive Individual Rights In Il V. Land Nordrhein-Westfalen, Alexis Haddock
Eia Directive Procedural Guarantees As Substantive Individual Rights In Il V. Land Nordrhein-Westfalen, Alexis Haddock
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Environmental impact assessments serve as a necessary tool for attaining the goals of the Aarhus Convention and the EIA Directive (2011/92). The Aarhus Convention and EIA Directive aim to guarantee the public’s right to participate in environmental decision-making, to be provided information necessary to effectively participate, and to have access to a procedure to challenge a decision. The ECJ’s recent case IL v. Land Nordrhein-Westfalen articulates the current interpretation of the European Union Member States’ obligations under the EIA Directive to provide individuals standing to challenge impact assessment decisions. This opinion reaffirmed that in cases where the procedural defect did …
Tightening The Legal ‘Net’: The Constitution’S Supremacy Clause Straddle Of The Power Divide, Steven Ferrey
Tightening The Legal ‘Net’: The Constitution’S Supremacy Clause Straddle Of The Power Divide, Steven Ferrey
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
This article analyzes Constitutional Supremacy Clause tensions in preempting state law that addresses climate change and the rapid warming of the Planet. Net metering laws, enacted in 80% of U.S. states, are a primary legal mechanism to control and mitigate climate warming. This article analyzes three recent federal court decisions creating a preemptive Supremacy Clause stand-off between federal and state law and presents a detailed state-by-state analysis of which those 80% of states’ laws could be preempted by legal challenge.
If state net metering laws affected only ordinary technologies, this issue would not be front and center with global warming. …
The Public Trust Doctrine And The Climate Crisis: Panacea Or Platitude?, Joseph Regalia
The Public Trust Doctrine And The Climate Crisis: Panacea Or Platitude?, Joseph Regalia
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Over a year of shutting down the global economy during the COVID pandemic achieved about .01 degrees of improvement in global warming. Not even a drop in the bucket. We continue to face a monumental climate crisis. And of the many ways that crisis threatens our environment, winnowing water resources is one of the scariest. One solution that many scholars have turned to is the public trust doctrine. At first blush, this doctrine sounds like a panacea for water management problems: When our water resources are threatened enough that current and future citizen’s access to it is in peril, the …
Interstate Pollution And The Quandary Of Personal Jurisdiction, Cedar H. Hobbs
Interstate Pollution And The Quandary Of Personal Jurisdiction, Cedar H. Hobbs
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Current Supreme Court personal jurisdiction analysis does not clearly support a finding of personal jurisdiction for out of state polluters in an interstate toxic tort. Still, some courts, including the Ninth Circuit, have attempted to find personal jurisdiction in these cases, but in doing so have employed tenuous analysis that can result in inconsistent case law. This Note argues that there is a better analytical framework which reemphasizes the role played by territorial borders in personal jurisdictional analysis. Through employing this framework, courts can find personal jurisdiction in interstate toxic torts while also preserving analytically consistent case law.
Nature’S Rights, Christiana Ochoa
Nature’S Rights, Christiana Ochoa
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Do forests and rivers possess standing to sue? Do mountain ranges have substantive rights? A recent issue of The Judges’ Journal, a preeminent publication for American judges, alerts the bench, bar, and policymakers to the rapidly emerging “rights of nature,” predicting that state and federal courts will increasingly see claims asserting such rights. Within the United States, Tribal law has begun to legally recognize the rights of rivers, mountains, and other natural features. Several municipalities across the United States have also acted to recognize the rights of nature. United States courts have not yet addressed the issue, though in 2017, …
Protecting Climate Change Law From A Revived Nondelegation Doctrine, Andrew Rockett
Protecting Climate Change Law From A Revived Nondelegation Doctrine, Andrew Rockett
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
In an era of political gridlock, a potential revitalization of the nondelegation doctrine threatens the Environmental Protection Agency’s existing framework for regulating greenhouse gas emissions and addressing the urgent threat of climate change. At its apex, the nondelegation doctrine briefly constrained permissible delegations from the legislature to the executive branch after two Supreme Court decisions in 1935. The doctrine has since weakened under the lenient “intelligible principle” standard. That standard today allows the legislative branch to make broad delegations to administrative arms of the executive branch, which then use technological and bureaucratic expertise to clarify, implement, and enforce statutes. The …
Composition Over Division: The Statutes Of The National Forest System, Jamison E. Colburn
Composition Over Division: The Statutes Of The National Forest System, Jamison E. Colburn
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
In September 2020, the U.S. Forest Service took the extraordinary step of closing all 18 national forests in California. The risk of catastrophic fire had become so acute that tolerating any human visitors—who could ignite more—was no longer tenable. Damages from the fires of 2020 are still being tallied, but the catastrophe is hard to deny. Five of the state’s six largest fires on record occurred in 2020. Migrating birds dropped from the sky by the thousands from some combination of asphyxiation, exhaustion, and starvation. An estimated 80% of California’s watersheds had recently burned by 2019, leaving them immediately vulnerable …
Blazing A Path To Wilderness: A Case Study Of Impact Litigation Through The Lens Of Legislative History, Neil Kagan
Blazing A Path To Wilderness: A Case Study Of Impact Litigation Through The Lens Of Legislative History, Neil Kagan
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Litigation can be a catalyst for legislation. Legislative history can reveal just how influential litigation is. The legislative history of the laws to designate wilderness in the 1980s provides an object lesson. It demonstrates that litigation both pushed Congress to act and shaped the legislation Congress enacted. This is especially true of the watershed year of 1984. That year, Congress enacted more wilderness laws and added more wilderness areas to the National Wilderness Preservation System in more states than in any other year. The legislative history of the 1984 wilderness laws embedded in bills, hearings, committee meetings, committee reports, and …
The Trees Speak For Themselves: Nature’S Rights Under International Law, Samantha Franks
The Trees Speak For Themselves: Nature’S Rights Under International Law, Samantha Franks
Michigan Journal of International Law
This note argues that the United Nations should center nature’s rights in the upcoming Global Pact on the Environment, solidifying the patchwork of international environmental law and encouraging domestic protection of the environment. Part II explores the current state of international environmental law, outlining the ways in which the doctrine remains incomplete. Part III establishes that Earth jurisprudence is an effective method to fill the gaps existing within traditional international environmental law. Part IV emphasizes the importance of soft law in international law. It draws a parallel between the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human’s Rights and a potential …
Is Climate Change A Threat To International Peace And Security?, Mark Nevitt
Is Climate Change A Threat To International Peace And Security?, Mark Nevitt
Michigan Journal of International Law
The climate-security century is here. Both the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) and the U.S. Fourth National Climate Assessment (“NCA”) recently sounded the alarm on climate change’s “super-wicked” and destabilizing security impacts. Scientists and security professionals alike reaffirm what we are witnessing with our own eyes: The earth is warming at a rapid rate; climate change affects international peace and security in complex ways; and the window for international climate action is slamming shut.
The Rule Of Five Guys, Lisa Heinzerling
The Rule Of Five Guys, Lisa Heinzerling
Michigan Law Review
A Review of The Rule of Five: Making Climate History at the Supreme Court. by Richard J. Lazarus.
Resolving "Resolved": Covenants Not To Sue And The Availability Of Cercla Contribution Actions, Jacob Podell
Resolving "Resolved": Covenants Not To Sue And The Availability Of Cercla Contribution Actions, Jacob Podell
Michigan Law Review
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA)—as part of its dual goals of cleaning up hazardous-waste sites and ensuring that the polluter pays for that cleanup—gives private parties two mutually exclusive causes of action: cost recovery and contribution. Contribution is available in limited circumstances, including if the party has “resolved” its liability with the government. But CERCLA does not define this operative term. Federal courts are split over how the structure of a settlement resolves liability. Several courts follow Bernstein v. Bankert, which held that any conditions precedent and nonadmissions of liability strongly suggest that a party …
Implementing Nepa In The Age Of Climate Change, Jayni Foley Hein, Natalie Jacewicz
Implementing Nepa In The Age Of Climate Change, Jayni Foley Hein, Natalie Jacewicz
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
The national government has a crucial role to play in combating climate change, yet federal projects continue to constitute a major source of United States greenhouse gas emissions. Under the National Environmental Policy Act, agencies must consider the environmental impacts of major federal actions before they can move forward. But agencies frequently downplay or ignore the climate change impacts of their projects in NEPA analyses, citing a slew of technical difficulties and uncertainties. This Article analyzes a suite of the most common analytical failures on the part of agencies with respect to climate change: failure to account for a project’s …
What A Difference A State Makes: California’S Authority To Regulate Motor Vehicle Emissions Under The Clean Air Act And The Future Of State Autonomy, Chiara Pappalardo
What A Difference A State Makes: California’S Authority To Regulate Motor Vehicle Emissions Under The Clean Air Act And The Future Of State Autonomy, Chiara Pappalardo
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Air pollutants from motor vehicles constitute one of the leading sources of local and global air degradation with serious consequences for human health and the overall stability of Earth’s climate. Under the Clean Air Act (“CAA”), for over fifty years, the state of California has served as a national “laboratory” for the testing of technological solutions and regulatory approaches to improve air quality. On September 19, 2019, the Trump Administration revoked California’s authority to set more stringent pollution emission standards. The revocation of California’s authority frustrates ambitious initiatives undertaken in California and in other states to reduce local air pollution …
The Rise And Fall Of Clean Air Act Climate Policy, Nathan Richardson
The Rise And Fall Of Clean Air Act Climate Policy, Nathan Richardson
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
The Clean Air Act has proven to be one of the most successful and durable statutes in American law. After the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, there was great hope that the Act could be brought to bear on climate change, the most pressing current environmental challenge of our time. Massachusetts was fêted as the most important environmental case ever decided, and, upon it, the Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama built a sweeping program of greenhouse gas regulations, aimed first at emissions from road vehicles, and later at fossil fuel power plants. It was the most …
Natural Resources And Natural Law Part Ii: The Public Trust Doctrine, Robert W. Adler
Natural Resources And Natural Law Part Ii: The Public Trust Doctrine, Robert W. Adler
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Natural Resources and Natural Law Part I: Prior Appropriation analyzed claims by some western ranchers, grounded in natural law, that they have property rights in grazing resources on federal public lands through prior appropriation. Those individuals advocated their position in part through civil disobedience and armed standoffs with federal officials. They also asserted that their duty to obey theistic natural law overrode any duty to obey the Nation’s positive law. Similar claims that individual religious beliefs override positive law have been made recently regarding a range of other controversial issues, such as same-sex marriage, public insurance for birth control, and …
Litigating For The Homeland: An Indian Treaty Framework To Climate Litigation In The Wake Of Juliana, Evan Neustater
Litigating For The Homeland: An Indian Treaty Framework To Climate Litigation In The Wake Of Juliana, Evan Neustater
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Climate change is an increasingly pressing issue on the world stage. The federal government, however, has largely declined to address any problems stemming from the effects of climate change, and litigation attempting to force the federal government to take action, as highlighted by Juliana v. United States, has largely failed. This Note presents the case for a class of plaintiffs more likely to succeed than youth plaintiffs in Juliana—federally recognized Indian tribes. Treaties between the United States and Indian nations are independent substantive sources of law that create enforceable obligations on the federal government. The United States maintains a …
Look To Windward: The Michigan Environmental Protection Act And The Case For Atmospheric Trust Litigation In The Mitten State, Jonathan M. Coumes
Look To Windward: The Michigan Environmental Protection Act And The Case For Atmospheric Trust Litigation In The Mitten State, Jonathan M. Coumes
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Failure to address climate change or even slow the growth of carbon emissions has led to innovation in the methods activists are using to push decisionmakers away from disaster. In the United States, climate activists frustrated by decades of legislative and executive inaction have turned to the courts to force the hand of the state. In their most recent iteration, climate cases have focused on the public trust doctrine, the notion that governments hold their jurisdictions’ natural resources in trust for the public. Plaintiffs have argued that the atmosphere is part of the public trust and that governments have a …