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Full-Text Articles in Law
Up In The Air: A Fifty-State Survey Of Atmospheric Trust Litigation Brought By Our Children’S Trust, Anna Christiansen
Up In The Air: A Fifty-State Survey Of Atmospheric Trust Litigation Brought By Our Children’S Trust, Anna Christiansen
Utah Law Review
Frustrated by government inaction in response to the threats posed by anthropogenic climate change, the advocacy organization Our Children’s Trust (OCT) is pursuing legal reform in every state in the United States. These efforts include petitioning state environmental agencies for rulemaking and filing lawsuits against those agencies and the states. The legal claims have generally been rooted in the public trust doctrine. This Note surveys OCT’s efforts and the evolution of the organization’s legal strategy, as OCT has recently based its lawsuits on violations of substantive due process, and in some cases, violations of the states’ own environmental laws. This …
Disclosing The Danger: State Attorney Ethics Rules Meet Climate Change, Victor B. Flatt
Disclosing The Danger: State Attorney Ethics Rules Meet Climate Change, Victor B. Flatt
Utah Law Review
This Article suggests a novel concept in climate change law and attorney ethics law by proposing that many states’ attorney ethics laws could be interpreted to require, or at least permit, attorneys to disclose client activity relating to greenhouse gas emissions. Every state has some form of ABA Model Rule 1.6(b), either requiring or allowing attorneys to disclose client activities that result in death or substantial bodily harm. This Article asserts that precedent surrounding this disclosure rule indicates that the rule could be applicable to harms caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Attorney disclosures, in turn, could impact a wide swath …
The Incidental Environmental Agency, Tara K. Righetti
The Incidental Environmental Agency, Tara K. Righetti
Utah Law Review
State oil and gas conservation agencies are the gatekeepers to oil and gas development: as the agencies charged with granting drilling permits, they decide if, when, where, and how oil and gas will be developed. As such, oil and gas conservation agencies sit on the front lines in the emerging, and increasingly irresolvable, struggle between fossil energy development and the environment. Current oil and gas conservation regulation is designed to promote development, maximize recovery of the resource, and protect the individual property rights of mineral owners. However, advocacy by environmental constituencies, including surface owners and local governments, has challenged the …
Water Law And Climate Change In The United States: A Review Of The Scholarship, Robin Kundis Craig
Water Law And Climate Change In The United States: A Review Of The Scholarship, Robin Kundis Craig
Utah Law Faculty Scholarship
Climate change’s effects on water resources have been some of the first realities of ecological change in the Anthropocene, forcing climate change adaptation efforts even as the international community seeks to mitigate climate change. Water law has thus become one vehicle of climate change adaptation. Research into the intersections between climate change and water law in the United States must contend with the facts that: (1) climate change affects different parts of this large country differently; and (2) United States water law is itself a complicated subject, with each state having its own laws for surface water and groundwater and …