Law Commons^™

Local Official And Climate Change, Stephen R. Miller

Articles

It is well-known that land use patterns can affect climate change—particularly the relation between land use development and transportation infrastructure. Yet even the most aggressive efforts to address climate change have largely ignored land use. This disconnect was noted in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent series of reports, collectively known as the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). This Article, adapted from Chapter 5 of Contemporary Issues in Climate Change Law & Policy (ELI Press 2016), seeks to make insights into land use development from the AR5 more readily accessible to the U.S. local official, with emphasis on issues …

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson

Articles

In this section: • United States Achieves Progress in Iran Relations with Nuclear Agreement Implementation, Prisoner Swap, and Hague Claims Tribunal Resolutions • European Union and United States Conclude Agreement to Regulate Transatlantic Personal Data Transfers • After Lengthy Delay, Congress Approves IMF Governance Reforms that Empower Emerging Market and Developing Countries • United States Joins Consensus on Paris Climate Agreement • United States and Eleven Other Nations Conclude Trans-Pacific Partnership

Federal Treaty And Trust Obligations, And Ocean Acidification, Robert T. Anderson

Articles

Ocean acidification will have profound effects on the entire human population and natural resources that depend in any way upon Earth’s oceans and lakes. In turn, those effects will be even greater, and potentially catastrophic, for indigenous populations who rely on the seas for physical, cultural, and spiritual sustenance. While most research on carbon dioxide absorption from the atmosphere has focused on oceans and the resulting acidification, many believe that acidification levels also will also increase in the Great Lakes. Indian tribes in the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes regions share reliance on marine and freshwater resources, and many …

Avoiding Decline: Fostering Resilience And Sustainability In Midsize Cities, Barbara Cosens

Articles

Eighty-five percent of United States citizens live in urban areas. However, research surrounding the resilience and sustainability of complex urban systems focuses largely on coastal megacities (>1 million people). Midsize cities differ from their larger counterparts due to tight urban-rural feedbacks with their immediate natural environments that result from heavy reliance and close management of local ecosystem services. They also may be less path-dependent than larger cities due to shorter average connection length among system components, contributing to higher responsiveness among social, infrastructural, and ecological feedbacks. These distinct midsize city features call for a framework that organizes information and …

The Revival Of Climate Change Science In U.S. Courts, William H. Rodgers, Jr., Andrea K. Rodgers

Articles

Science never has been the obstacle to the recognition of climate change. Since Arhennius did his original calculations in 1896, the scientific world was quite aware of the prospect that industrial-age levels of carbon dioxide pollution would result in increasing global temperatures and acidification of the world’s oceans. The brilliant—and striking—graphical display that we know today as the Keeling Curve started in 1957, and year after year it records the relentless upward march of these atmospheric pollutant loadings.

Through the years, necessarily, a vast number of scientific warnings, publications, findings, and predictions would be offered to the public at large, …

Reflections On Seminole Rock: The Past, Present, And Future Of Deference To Agency Regulatory Interpretations, Amy J. Wildermuth, Sanne H. Knudsen

Articles

Seminole Rock (or Auer) deference has captured the attention of scholars, policymakers, and the judiciary. That is why Notice & Comment, the blog of the Yale Journal on Regulation and the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice, hosted an online symposium from September 12 to September 23, 2016 on the subject. This symposium contains over 20 contributions addressing different aspects of Seminole Rock deference.

Resilience And Raisins: Partial Takings And Coastal Climate Change Adaptation, Joshua Galperin, Zahir Hadi Tajani

Articles

The increased need for government-driven coastal resilience projects will lead to a growing number of claims for “partial takings” of coastal property. Much attention has been paid to what actions constitute a partial taking, but there is less clarity about how to calculate just compensation for such takings, and when compensation should be offset by the value of benefits conferred to the property owner. While the U.S. Supreme Court has an analytically consistent line of cases on compensation for partial takings, it has repeatedly failed (most recently in Horne v. U.S. Department of Agriculture) to articulate a clear rule. The …

Water Law Reform In The Face Of Climate Change: Learning From Drought In Australia And The Western United States, Barbara Cosens

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Western societies have developed three approaches to governance of common pool resources such as water: 1) The division of the resource into private property; (2) government regulation; and 3) local self-organization. This article asserts that all three are needed in varying combinations to rise to the challenge presented by the impact of climate change on water supply and demand. Drought presents a preview of potential future climate scenarios and Australia and the western United States are both responding to its harshness through innovation in water governance. These experiments present an opportunity to compare the approaches of Australia and the western …

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson

Articles

In this section: • United States and France Sign Agreement to Compensate Holocaust Victims • United States Conducts Naval Operation Within Twelve Nautical Miles of Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, Prompting Protests from China • United States Pursues Bilateral and Multilateral Initiatives in and Around the Arctic

Enhancing Conservation Options: An Argument For Statutory Recognition Of Options To Purchase Conservation Easements (Opces), Federico Cheever, Jessica Owley

Articles

Land conservation transactions have been the most active component of the conservation movement in the United States for the past three decades. Conservation organizations have acquired property rights-mostly conservation easements-to protect roughly 40 million acres of land nationwide. However, climate change threatens this vast edifice. Climate change means that the resources that land conservation transactions were intended to protect may not persist on the land protected. Options to purchase conservation easements ("OPCEs") have long played a modest but important role in conservation law practice. In the world climate change is creating, with its substantial uncertainties and shifting windows of opportunity, …