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Series

Environmental Law

2016

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Climate Exactions, J. Peter Byrne, Kathryn A. Zyla Jan 2016

Climate Exactions, J. Peter Byrne, Kathryn A. Zyla

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay presents a legal device by which local governments can put a price on climate emissions and loss of resiliency generated by new real estate development. Local governments commonly impose fees, a type of monetary exaction, on new development to offset public costs that such development will impose. This Essay argues that monetary fees offer significant potential as a tool to help local governments manage land development’s contribution to climate change. Such “climate exactions” can put a price on the carbon emissions from new development and also on development that reduces the natural resiliency of the jurisdiction to the …


A Brook With Legal Rights: The Rights Of Nature In Court, Hope M. Babcock Jan 2016

A Brook With Legal Rights: The Rights Of Nature In Court, Hope M. Babcock

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Over two decades ago, Professor Christopher Stone asked what turned out to be a question of enduring interest: should trees have standing? His question was recently answered in the affirmative by a creek in Pennsylvania, which successfully intervened in a lawsuit between an energy company and a local township to prevent the lifting of a ban against drilling oil and gas wastewater wells. Using that intervention, this Article examines whether such an initiative might succeed on a broader scale. The Article parses the structure, language, and punctuation of Article III, as well as various theories of nonhuman personhood to see …