Law Commons^™

Addressing Human Rights Abuses: Truth Commissions And The Value Of Amnesty, Naomi Roht-Arriaza, Peter A. Schey, Dinah L. Shelton

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Developing Countries, Regional Organizations, And The Iso 14001 Environmental Management Standard, Naomi Roht-Arriaza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Environment And The Law: A Dictionary, James S. Heller

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

American Mining Congress V. Army Corps Of Engineers: Ignoring Chevron And The Clean Water Act's Broad Purpose, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Part I of this article will provide a brief introduction to section 404 of the Clean Water Act. Part II will examine the Tulloch rule. Part III will examine the district court's opinion. Finally, part IV will demonstrate that section 404(a) is ambiguous regarding whether incidental fallback from dredging may in some circumstances constitute disposal under the statute and, accordingly, that under the Chevron doctrine the district court erred in failing to defer to the agencies' Tulloch rule.

Whose Water Is It? Private Rights And Public Authority Over Reclamation Project Water, Reed D. Benson

Faculty Scholarship

The American West, for the most part, is an arid place. The average annual precipitation in the seventeen western states is twenty-one inches, but in many places is far less. Often there is too little water to go around, even in places such as Oregon that are ommonly believed to be wet.' Water is valuable everywhere because it is indispensable; it is even more precious in the West because it is scarce.

Look Who's Making The Rules: International Environmental Standard Setting By Non-Governmental Organizations, Errol E. Meidinger

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Environmental Malthusianism: Integrating Population And Environmental Policy, Robert M. Hardaway

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

In his Article, Professor Hardaway argues that while Thomas Malthus may have been incorrect in his assertion that the growing population would deplete food supplies causing starvation and disease, Malthus accurately assessed the environmental impact of population. Professor Hardaway argues that overpopulation depletes natural resources and degrades the environment. He urges environmentalists to focus on population growth, rather than short term and remedial solutions, to solve environmental problems. In order to focus on population growth, society must face tough issues such as abortion, family planning, immigration, and economic growth policies.

Are Tuna And Dolphins The Same? A Rule Of Reason Approach To Resolve The Trade And Environment Conflict, Anantha K. Paruthipattu

LLM Theses and Essays

Trade and environment are both primary values in an ecologically and economically interdependent world; unleashing trade without regard to environmental impact is as detrimental as guarding the environment at the expense of trade and development. Tuna and dolphins have come to symbolize the policy struggle between trade and environment. In early 1990, the United States banned the import of tuna from Mexico and other countries that were fishing in a manner that damaged dolphins in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean. Mexico challenged this ban before a GATT Panel, which ruled against the United States and held that the tuna ban …

Developing A National Coastal Zone Management Program For Venezuela, Marisol Salazar

LLM Theses and Essays

The primary focus of this study is to develop a National Coastal Zone Management Program for Venezuela, a moderate, comprehensive, and an effective long-term program which allows the development and protection of the Venezuelan Coastal Zone now and in the future. This program must comply with the actual Venezuelan environmental laws and its administrative mechanisms. Also, it must help to control ecological, economic, commercial, social, and human pressures on the Venezuelan coastal area. The design of this project will be based on an analysis of the extensive experience of the U.S.A. coastal states under the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA); …

The Statutory And Constitutional Mandate For A No Surprises Policy, Fred P. Bosselman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Using Citizen Suits To Protect Biodiversity, William Snape

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

INTRODUCTION: Over the past several decades, environmental advocates have expended enormous effort attempting to pass laws that protect air, water, land and species.' But even the best written laws will not be effective unless they are implemented. At the federal level, most modern environmental statutes include enforcement mechanisms that allow for the active involvement of the public. The most common of these are provisions authorizing citizen suits and public comments on proposed agency actions. The rationale for this public involvement is simply that federal agencies sometimes do not enforce or obey the laws they are charged to uphold. For instance, …

Book Review, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.

Attaining Systems For Sustainability Through Environmental Law, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Five years have passed since the historic Earth Summit. Although significant progress has been made since Rio, much remains to be done. Poverty and environment degradation continue to affect the lives of millions of people in many parts of the world. Global warming, the loss of biological diversity, the spread of deserts, deforestation, the crisis in many of our cities remind us every day of the challenges which confront us. The unsustainable patterns of consumption and production continue to be the major cause of environmental degradation worldwide. This is therefore not an occasion for complacency or mindless celebration. It is, …

Environmental Inequity: Economic Causes, Economic Solutions, Thom Lambert, Christopher Boerner

Faculty Publications

The article examines one such shortcoming: namely, that existing research fails to account for the dynamic nature of the housing market. Analyzing data from the St. Louis metropolitan area, this study finds that economic factors--not siting discrimination--are behind many claims of environmental racism. This phenomenon suggests the need to develop public policies that fit the economic nature of the problem. In particular, a policy that compensates individuals living near industrial sites is the key to securing environmental justice.

The Lead Poisoning Challenge: An Approach For California And Other States, Clifford L. Rechtschaffen

Publications

This Article describes a comprehensive framework for addressing lead-based paint hazards that balances the panoply of competing interests and affected stakeholders. The framework is broadly applicable to the overwhelming number of states that have not yet adopted preventative lead laws; this Article focuses in particular on California to illustrate the types of challenges that these states are likely to confront. The proposed approach is based on the recommendations of a congressionally mandated national task force, modified to address the specific needs of California. Recognizing the enormity of the lead-based paint problem (over 8.6 million housing units in California may have …

In Defense Of The Superfund Liability System: Matching The Diagnosis And The Cure, Rena I. Steinzor, Linda E. Greer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Resource Law Notes Newsletter, No. 39, Winter Issue, Feb. 1997, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Resource Law Notes: The Newsletter of the Natural Resources Law Center (1984-2002)

No abstract provided.

The Committee On The Regions And The Role Of Regional Governments In The European Union, Naomi Roht-Arriaza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Compliance With Private Voluntary Agreements: The Example Of The International Organization For Standardization's Iso 14000, Naomi Roht-Arriaza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Thinking Of Environmental Law As A Complex Adaptive System: How To Clean Up The Environment By Making A Mess Of Environmental Law, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article is the fourth in my series of articles exploring the application of complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory to legal systems. It applies the model built in the three prior installments (in the Duke, Vanderbilt, and UC-Davis law reviews) to the specific context of environmental law. The work describes the subject matter of environmental law as a CAS and explains why environmental law thus must "think like a complex adaptive system" in order to accomplish its objectives.

The Benefits And Costs Of Regulatory Reforms For Superfund, W. Kip Viscusi, James T. Hamilton

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The current policy approach used in the Superfund program is a peculiar halfway house. EPA devotes substantial effort to identifying chemicals at a site and ascertaining their potential risks. It also assesses the costs of a range of remedies in considerable detail. However, many key elements are missing in the agency's analyses. There is no explicit consideration of the size of the population at risk. Risks to a single individual have the same weight as risks to a large exposed population. Actual and hypothetical exposures to chemicals receive equal weight so that risks to a person who, in the future, …

Some Overall Observations About The 1996 New York State Environmental Bond Act And A Closer Look At Title 5 And Its Approach To The "Brownfields" Dilemma, David L. Markell

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Ecosystem Management And The 1996 Sustainable Fisheries Act, Shi-Ling Hsu, James E. Willen

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Defeating Environmental Law: The Geology Of Legal Advantage, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

Articles

My talk today will: (1) introduce the metaphor of geology, (2) suggest to you that complexity has "gainers" as well as "losers," and (3) show you how environmental laws can be defeated by these twin engines of complexity and clever human adversaries.

[Third Annual Lloyd K. Garrison Lecture on Environmental Law.]

The Role Of Bilateralism In Fulfilling The Federal-Tribal Relationship: The Tribal Rights-Endangered Species Secretarial Order, Charles Wilkinson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Country/Region Reports -- United States Of America, Linda A. Malone

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Asteroids And Comets: U.S. And International Law And The Lowest-Probability, Highest Consequence Risk, Michael B. Gerrard, Anna W. Barber

Faculty Scholarship

Asteroids and comets pose unique policy problems. They are the ultimate example of a low probability, high consequence event: no one in recorded human history is confirmed to have ever died from an asteroid or a comet, but the odds are that at some time in the next several centuries (and conceivably next year) an asteroid or a comet will cause mass localized destruction and that at some time in the coming half million years (and conceivably next year), an asteroid or a comet will kill several billion people. The sudden extinction of the dinosaurs, and most other species 65 …

Why Chinese Wildlife Disappears As Cites Spreads, John C. Nagle

Journal Articles

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) proves that popularity does not assure success. CITES is one of the oldest and most popular international environmental treaties. Yet after twenty-three years and the approval of over 125 nations, wildlife continues to become extinct and endangered at an unhindered rate. Why?

The explanation for this paradox can be found by comparing the state of wildlife in China and the United States. Both countries are parties to CITES. Their efforts to enforce CITES are very different, but they both reveal the limitations of the current treaty …

Participation Run Amok: The Costs Of Mass Participation For Deliberative Agency Decisionmaking, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article addresses the implications of broad-based participatory reforms for administrative process, with a particular focus on how participation reveals itself in different political-theoretic models of agency governance. The first section of the Article explores participation's value to agency governance. The second section of the Article presents three models of agency governance - expertocratic, pluralist, and civic republican - and discusses participation's importance to each model. The Article then posits a distinction between ordinary and constitutive agency decision-making, and explores how participation affects each for the three distinct models of agency governance. The implications of mass participation are explored in …

Refracting The Spectrum Of Clean Water Act Standing In Light Of Lujan V. Defenders Of Wildlife, Karl S. Coplan

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

First, this article will review the impetus and purposes for the Clean Water Act of 1972, including its citizen suit provision, particularly as these purposes relate to the elimination of specific harm or causation requirements in enforcement actions under its provisions. Second, this article will briefly review the basic elements of Article III standing requirements as enunciated by the Supreme Court, and the development of Supreme Court standing doctrine in environmental cases leading up to and including the Defenders of Wildlife decision. Then the article will survey the various approaches courts have taken in applying Article III standing doctrine to …