Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Environmental Law (64)
- Legislation (24)
- Administrative Law (21)
- Science and Technology Law (10)
- State and Local Government Law (8)
-
- Water Law (8)
- Comparative and Foreign Law (5)
- Natural Resources Law (5)
- Supreme Court of the United States (5)
- Courts (4)
- Legal Remedies (4)
- Property Law and Real Estate (4)
- Public Law and Legal Theory (4)
- Constitutional Law (3)
- Criminal Law (3)
- Health Law and Policy (3)
- Law and Economics (3)
- Law and Politics (3)
- President/Executive Department (3)
- Torts (3)
- Energy and Utilities Law (2)
- Environmental Policy (2)
- International Law (2)
- International Trade Law (2)
- Legal History (2)
- Oil, Gas, and Mineral Law (2)
- Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration (2)
- Social and Behavioral Sciences (2)
- Contracts (1)
- Publication Year
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 30 of 66
Full-Text Articles in Law
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.
Back To The Future: Creating A Bipartisan Environmental Movement For The 21st Century, David M. Uhlmann
Back To The Future: Creating A Bipartisan Environmental Movement For The 21st Century, David M. Uhlmann
Articles
With a contentious presidential election looming amidst a pandemic, economic worries, and historic protests against systemic racism, climate action may seem less pressing than other challenges. Nothing could be further from the truth. To prevent greater public health threats and economic dislocation from climate disruption, which will disproportionately harm Black Americans, people of color, and indigenous people, this Comment argues that we need to restore the bipartisanship that fueled the environmental movement and that the fate of the planet—and our children and grandchildren—depends upon our collective action.
New Environmental Crimes Project Data Shows That Pollution Prosecutions Plummeted During The First Two Years Of The Trump Administration, David M. Uhlmann
New Environmental Crimes Project Data Shows That Pollution Prosecutions Plummeted During The First Two Years Of The Trump Administration, David M. Uhlmann
Other Publications
The latest data from the Environmental Crimes Project at the University of Michigan Law School shows a dramatic drop in pollution prosecutions during the first two years under President Donald J. Trump. The data, which now includes 14 years of cases from 2005–2018, shows a 70 percent decrease in Clean Water Act prosecutions under President Trump, as well as a more than 50 percent decrease in Clean Air Act prosecutions. The data again shows that most defendants charged with pollution crime commit misconduct involving one or more of the aggravating factors identified in my previous scholarship, so prosecutors continue to …
Environmental Law In The United States, Howard J. Bromberg, Joshua I. Barrett
Environmental Law In The United States, Howard J. Bromberg, Joshua I. Barrett
Book Chapters
Environmental law in the United States comprises a complex patchwork of federal, state, and local statutes and regulations, along with the traditions of common law. Most statutory environmental programs emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1960s, writings such as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) fueled environmental awareness in the United States; the first Earth Day, celebrated on April 22, 1970, symbolized the birth of vironmental law entered a new era in 1970, when President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act and the 1970 Clean …
Abandoned But Not Forgotten: Improperly Plugged And Orphaned Wells May Pose Serious Concerns For Shale Development, Bret Wells, Tracy Hester
Abandoned But Not Forgotten: Improperly Plugged And Orphaned Wells May Pose Serious Concerns For Shale Development, Bret Wells, Tracy Hester
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
This Article addresses the intersection of oil and gas law and environmental law on a topic that has profound significance for the nation’s oil industry and for the environment. In this regard, the Permian Basin is experiencing a renaissance that has fundamentally impacted oil production in the United States. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing now allow the industry to produce in the Permian Basin’s unconventional shale formations in ways that were unimaginable a decade ago. But, the hot shale plays within the Permian Basin exist above conventional fields that are littered with a century’s worth of abandoned wells. Fracturing new …
Lamarck Revisited: The Implications Of Epigenetics For Environmental Law, Michael P. Vandenbergh, David J. Vandenbergh, John G. Vandenbergh
Lamarck Revisited: The Implications Of Epigenetics For Environmental Law, Michael P. Vandenbergh, David J. Vandenbergh, John G. Vandenbergh
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
For generations, a bedrock concept of biology was that genetic mutations are necessary to pass traits from one generation to the next, but new developments in genetics are challenging this fundamental assumption. A growing body of scientific evidence demonstrates that chemical alteration of the way a gene functions, whether through exposure to chemicals, foods or even traumatic experiences, may not only affect the exposed individual, but also the individual’s offspring for two generations or more. This interaction between genes and the environment, known as epigenetics, has revolutionized the understanding of how genes are expressed within an individual and how they …
Technology-Based? Cost Factoring In U.S. Environmental Standards, Jamison E. Colburn
Technology-Based? Cost Factoring In U.S. Environmental Standards, Jamison E. Colburn
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Environmental controls in the United States are often said to be “technology-based” because the polluter’s duties are determined by the available technology for controlling that pollution rather than by the social costs and benefits of doing so. Indeed, this is much of what distinguishes U.S. environmental law post-1970 from that which preceded it. But technology-based standards have in fact weighed the costs of controlling pollution in unique, often obscure ways, yielding an analysis that defies standardization and basic notions of transparency. Often lumped under an umbrella heading called “feasibility” analysis and justified on the grounds that it avoids many of …
The Private Causes Of Action Under Cercla: Navigating The Intersection Of Sections 107(A) And 113(F), Jeffrey M. Gaba
The Private Causes Of Action Under Cercla: Navigating The Intersection Of Sections 107(A) And 113(F), Jeffrey M. Gaba
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
The Comprehensive Environmental, Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) provides three distinct “private” causes of action that allow parties to recover all or part of their cleanup costs from “potentially responsible parties.” Section 107(a)(4)(B) provides a “direct” right of cost recovery. Sections 113(f)(1) and 113(f)(3)(B) provide a right of contribution following a CERCLA civil action or certain judicial or administrative settlements. The relationship among these causes of action has been the source of considerable confusion. Two Supreme Court cases, Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Aviall Services, Inc. and United States v. Atlantic Research Corp. have identified certain situations in which the …
Instrument Choice, Carbon Emissions, And Information, Michael Wara
Instrument Choice, Carbon Emissions, And Information, Michael Wara
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
This Article examines the consequences of a previously unrecognized difference between pollutant cap-and-trade schemes and pollution taxes. Implementation of cap-and-trade relies on a forecast of future emissions, while implementation of a pollution tax does not. Realistic policy designs using either regulatory instrument almost always involve a phase-in over time to avoid economic disruption. Cap-and-trade accomplishes this phase-in via a limit on emissions that falls gradually below the forecast of future pollutant emissions. Emissions taxation accomplishes the same via a gradually increasing levy on pollution. Because of the administrative complexity of establishing an emissions trading market, cap-and-trade programs typically require between …
Too Many Cooks In The Climate Change Kitchen: The Case For An Administrative Remedy For Damages Caused By Increased Greenhouse Gas Concentrations, Benjamin Reese
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Recent federal and state court decisions have made clear that federal common law claims against emitters of greenhouse gases are not sustainable; however, those same courts seem to have given state common law tort claims the green light, at least if the claims are brought in the state where the polluters are located. This Note contends that such suits are not an adequate remedy for those injured by climate change because they will face nearly insurmountable barriers in state court, and because there are major policy-level drawbacks to relying on state tort law rather than a federal solution. This Note …
Unpacking Eme Homer: Cost, Proportionality, And Emissions Reductions, Daniel A. Farber
Unpacking Eme Homer: Cost, Proportionality, And Emissions Reductions, Daniel A. Farber
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Interstate air pollution can prevent even the most diligent downwind state from attaining the air quality levels required by federal law. Allocating responsibility for emissions cuts when multiple upwind states contribute to downwind air quality violations presents a particularly difficult problem. Justice Ginsburg’s opinion for the Court in EPA v. EME Homer City Generator, L.P., gives EPA broad discretion to craft regulatory solutions for this problem. Although the specific statutory provision at issue was deceptively simple, the underlying problem was especially complex because of the large number of states involved. Indeed, neither the majority opinion nor the dissent seems to …
Environmental Law, Public Health, And The Values Conundrum, David M. Uhlmann
Environmental Law, Public Health, And The Values Conundrum, David M. Uhlmann
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
In September 1996, when I was nearing the end of my sixth year as a Justice Department environmental crimes prosecutor, one of my colleagues sent me an email that there was a “good-sounding RCRA [Resource Conservation and Recovery Act] knowing endangerment case developing in Idaho.” A twenty-year-old man named Scott Dominguez had collapsed inside a storage tank at an Idaho fertilizer manufacturing facility called Evergreen Resources. Mr. Dominguez could not be rescued for nearly an hour, because firefighters who responded to the scene did not know what was in the tank and what safety precautions they needed to take before …
The Dormant Commerce Clause And California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard, Kathryn Abbott
The Dormant Commerce Clause And California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard, Kathryn Abbott
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), enacted as part of the State’s pioneering Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32), purports to regulate the amount of carbon emissions associated with fuels consumed in the state. Part of this scheme involves assigning numeric scores to vehicle fuels reflecting the amount of carbon emissions associated with their production, transportation, and use. The scores are part of a “cap-and-trade” scheme to lower the state’s total amount of carbon emissions associated with fuel use. Out-of-state industry groups brought a challenge in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, alleging that the …
Environmental Law At The Crossroads: Looking Back 25, Looking Forward 25, Richard J. Lazarus
Environmental Law At The Crossroads: Looking Back 25, Looking Forward 25, Richard J. Lazarus
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Twenty-five years used to seem like an exceedingly long time. It certainly did when I was graduating from law school and not yet twentyfive. My perspective on time, however, has (naturally) since evolved, much as environmental law itself and the controversies surrounding it have, too, evolved. The contrast between environmental law twenty-five years ago and environmental law today is remarkable and makes clear that environmental law and lawmaking were changing in fundamental ways a generation ago, but those changes are revealed only now with the aid of hindsight. To be sure, the statutory texts of domestic environmental law are strikingly …
Judicial Limitation Of The Epa's Oversight Authority In Clean Water Act Permitting Of Mountaintop Mining Valley Fills , Christopher D. Eaton
Judicial Limitation Of The Epa's Oversight Authority In Clean Water Act Permitting Of Mountaintop Mining Valley Fills , Christopher D. Eaton
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Mountaintop removal mining operations in the Appalachian region have expanded significantly in recent decades. The practice decimates the mountain ecosystems by leveling forests, filling headwater streams, and producing significant runoff of heavy metals, sediment, and other pollutants that impair the aquatic environment of entire watersheds. Yet environmental permitting of the practice is relatively limited. A recent trend in litigation aimed at halting mining operations has involved challenging permits that authorize the discharge of mining overburden into headwater streams pursuant to the Clean Water Act (CWA). The Army Corps of Engineers has assumed jurisdiction over such discharges under section 404 of …
Past Its Prime: Why The Clean Air Act Is In Need Of Modification, Levi Smith
Past Its Prime: Why The Clean Air Act Is In Need Of Modification, Levi Smith
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat
The Clean Air Act (CAA) is the primary federal statute regulating the emission of air pollutants. First enacted in 1970, the CAA requires, inter alia, the federal government to establish air quality goals and states to develop implementation plans to achieve those goals. The most stringent requirements of the CAA are imposed on “new” or “modified” sources of pollution, such as sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, and particulate matter. Sources that were operating when the CAA was enacted are mostly exempt from regulation under the Act. Because of the substantial costs associated with the CAA standards, there is an incentive for …
Is A Substantive, Non-Positivist United States Environmental Law Possible?, Dan Tarlock
Is A Substantive, Non-Positivist United States Environmental Law Possible?, Dan Tarlock
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
U.S. environmental law is almost exclusively positive and procedural. The foundation is the pollution control and biodiversity conservation statutes enacted primarily between 1969–1980 and judicial decisions interpreting them. This law has created detailed processes for making decisions but has produced few substantive constraints on private and public decisions which impair the environment. Several substantive candidates have been proposed, such as the common law, a constitutional right to a healthy environment, the public trust, and the extension of rights to fauna and flora. However, these candidates have not produced the hoped for substantive law. Many argue that a substantive U.S. environmental …
The Quest For A Sustainable Future And The Dawn Of A New Journal At Michigan Law, David M. Uhlmann
The Quest For A Sustainable Future And The Dawn Of A New Journal At Michigan Law, David M. Uhlmann
Articles
When I joined the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School in 2007, the first assignment I gave students in my Environmental Law and Policy class was John McPhee's Encounters with the Archdruid. It must have seemed like a curious choice to them, particularly coming from a professor who just three months earlier had been the Chief of the Environmental Crimes Section at the U.S. Department of Justice. The book was not a dramatic tale of courtroom battles. In fact, the book was not even about the law, and the clash of environmental values it depicted pre-dated the environmental …
Investigating 40 C.F.R. Sec. 124.55(B): State-Court Review Of Npdes Permit Certifications, Tad Macfarlan
Investigating 40 C.F.R. Sec. 124.55(B): State-Court Review Of Npdes Permit Certifications, Tad Macfarlan
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Note investigates the wisdom and validity of 40 CER. § 124.55(b), a Clean Water Act regulation promulgated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as part of the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting program. The Clean Water Act provides affected states with an opportunity to certify federally administered NDES permits before issuance by EPA. State certification is a meaningful moment in water quality regulation, and judicial review of these critical decisions takes place in state courts. Unfortunately, 40 C.ER. § 124.55(b), designed to bring certainty and finality to permit-holders, effectively removes state courts from the process of …
Environmental Deliberative Democracy And The Search For Administrative Legitimacy: A Legal, Positivism Approach, Michael Ray Harris
Environmental Deliberative Democracy And The Search For Administrative Legitimacy: A Legal, Positivism Approach, Michael Ray Harris
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The failure of regulatory systems over the past two decades to lessen the environment degradation associated with modern human economic output has begun to undermine the legitimacy of environmental lawmaking in the United States and around the world. Recent scholarship suggests that reversal of this trend will require a breach of the environmental administrative apparatus by democratization of a particular kind, namely the inclusion of greater public discourse within the context of regulatory decision-making. This Article examines this claim through the lens of modern legal positivism. Legal positivism provides the tools necessary to test for and identify the specfic structural …
Nepa In The Hot Seat: A Proposal For An Office Of Environmental Analysis, Aliza M. Cohen
Nepa In The Hot Seat: A Proposal For An Office Of Environmental Analysis, Aliza M. Cohen
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Judicial deference under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) can be problematic. It is a well-established rule of administrative law that courts will grant a high degree of deference to agency decisions. They do this out of respect for agency expertise and policy judgment. This deference is applied to NEPA lawsuits without acknowledging the special pressures that agencies face while assessing the environmental impacts of their own projects. Though there is a strong argument that these pressures undermine the reasons for deferential review, neither the statute nor the courts have provided plaintiffs with adequate means to remedy this problem. Agency …
Permitting Under The Clean Air Act: How Current Standards Impose Obstacles To Achieving Environmental Justice, Annise Katherine Maguire
Permitting Under The Clean Air Act: How Current Standards Impose Obstacles To Achieving Environmental Justice, Annise Katherine Maguire
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Most studies about the environmental justice movement focus on the disproportionate share of environmental burdens minority and low-income populations bear, the negative effects of an unequal distribution of undesirable land uses, and how industry contributes to the adverse impacts suffered by the communities. Unfortunately, trying to prove that an injury was caused by actions of a nearby facility is difficult, and this approach has yielded few legal victories for environmental justice communities. While it is important to remain focused on how environmental justice communities are disproportionately impacted by undesirable land uses, the analysis must shift if the law is to …
Strange Bedfellows, David M. Uhlmann
Strange Bedfellows, David M. Uhlmann
Articles
Environmental protection has not been a priority for the Bush administration, but, contrary to popular perception, criminal prosecution of companies and officials accused of breaking environmental laws has flourished.
Transboundary Pollution: Harmonizing International And Domestic Law, Noah D. Hall
Transboundary Pollution: Harmonizing International And Domestic Law, Noah D. Hall
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Addressing transnational pollution requires both international and domestic law. Transnational pollution is an international problem that demands and deserves the attention of international legal mechanisms such as treaties, agreements, arbitration, and international management and governance. At the same time, transnational pollution problems can often be addressed more effectively and efficiently through the domestic legal system. An ideal approach is to harmonize transnational pollution management and dispute resolution under international and domestic law. This Article seeks to provide pragmatic, feasible, and politically realistic solutions to transnational pollution by harmonizing international and domestic law. However, given the diversity in geography, domestic legal …
Now, Later, Or Never: Applying Asymmetric Discount Rates In Nuisance Remedies And Federal Regulations, Yang Wang
Michigan Law Review
Part I of this Note reviews recent literature on the need for asymmetric discount rates in cost-benefit analysis. It observes that even though scholars disagree on the precise value of the appropriate discount rate, many agree that future costs and benefits must be discounted at different rates. Part II then constructs a simple model, consisting of two activities competing for the same resource, and analyzes the consequences of asymmetric discounting under this model. This Part proposes that, to maximize the joint social utility, the resource should be time divided between the competing activities rather than permanently allocated to one or …
An Analysis Of Potential Conflicts Between The Stockholm Convention And Its Parties' Wto Obligations, D. Dean Batchelder
An Analysis Of Potential Conflicts Between The Stockholm Convention And Its Parties' Wto Obligations, D. Dean Batchelder
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Comment examines the compatibility of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants with parties' WTO obligations under the GATT Agreement. The Stockholm Convention represents a broad-based attempt to regulate persistent organic pollutants (POPs), some of the most damaging chemicals to the environment and human health. The commitments that parties to the Stockholm Convention have undertaken to control POPs may implicate international trade commitments. Hopefully the discussion in this Comment may also be relevant to other multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), especially those involving trade measures.
Is The Clean Air Act Unconstitutional?, Cass R. Sunstein
Is The Clean Air Act Unconstitutional?, Cass R. Sunstein
Michigan Law Review
This Article deals with two linked questions. The first involves the future of the Clean Air Act. The particular concern is how the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") might be encouraged, with help from reviewing courts, to issue better ambient air quality standards, and in the process to shift from some of the anachronisms of 1970s environmentalism to a more fruitful approach to environmental protection. The second question involves the role of the nondelegation doctrine in American public law, a doctrine that shows unmistakable signs of revival. I will suggest that improved performance by EPA and agencies in general, operating in …
Revitalizing Environmental Federalism, Daniel C. Esty
Revitalizing Environmental Federalism, Daniel C. Esty
Michigan Law Review
Politicians from Speaker Newt Gingrich to President Bill Clinton, cheered on by academics such as Richard Revesz, are eagerly seeking to return authority over environmental regulation to the states. In the European Union, localist opponents of environmental decisionmaking in Brussels rally under the banner of "subsidiarity." And in debates over international trade liberalization, demands abound for the protection of "national sovereignty" in environmental regulation. All of these efforts presume that a decentralized approach to environmental policy will yield better results than more centralized programs. This presumption is misguided. While the character of some environmental concerns warrants a preference for local …
Controlling The Environmental Consequences Of Power Development In The People's Republic Of China, Homer Sun
Controlling The Environmental Consequences Of Power Development In The People's Republic Of China, Homer Sun
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Note proposes a strategy to mitigate the environmental degradation resulting from China's power development. Part I introduces China's power industry - its excessive dependence on coal, its antiquated and inefficient infrastructure, its pollutive effects, and its projected expansion. Part II appraises the ways in which China's environmental laws, macroeconomic controls, and foreign investment restrictions influence the growth of power development and its corresponding effect on the environment. Part III assesses the role that governments, development banks, and international organizations can play in curbing the environmental impact of Chinese power projects. Considering the problems associated with current Chinese and international …
Property Rules And Liability Rules: The Cathedral In Another Light, James E. Krier, Stewart J. Schwab
Property Rules And Liability Rules: The Cathedral In Another Light, James E. Krier, Stewart J. Schwab
Articles
Ronald Coase's essay on "The Problem of Social Cost" introduced the world to transaction costs, and the introduction laid the foundation for an ongoing cottage industry in law and economics. And of all the law-and-economics scholarship built on Coase's insights, perhaps the most widely known and influential contribution has been Calabresi and Melamed's discussion of what they called "property rules" and "liability rules."' Those rules and the methodology behind them are our subjects here. We have a number of objectives, the most basic of which is to provide a much needed primer for those students, scholars, and lawyers who are …