Law Commons^™

Deregulation: Too Big For One Branch, But Maybe Not For Two, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

When President Trump took office in 2017, he pursued a deregulatory agenda that exceeded even that of President Reagan. Environmental rules and policies were a major target of the Administration. The President deployed a mix of traditional tools, such as executive orders, guidance documents and policies, and rulemaking to suspend or reverse longstanding regulations and policies of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of the Interior, and other environmental agencies. The Administration also utilized the Congressional Review Act as it had not been used before and aggressively sought abeyances in litigation challenging disfavored rules and policies to advance its …

Whither The Lofty Goals Of The Environmental Laws?: Can Statutory Directives Restore Purposivism When We Are All Textualists Now?, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

Congress set ambitious goals to protect public health and the environment when it enacted the federal environmental laws through bipartisan efforts in the 1970s. For many years, the federal courts interpreted the environmental laws to carry out those enacted purposes. Over time, however, courts greatly reduced their focus on the environmental and public health purposes of the environmental laws when interpreting those statutes due to the rise in textualism, the declining influence of the Chevron doctrine, and the increasing willingness of courts to defer to agency underenforcement of statutory responsibilities across all regulatory statutes.

In 2020, the Environmental Protection Network, …

From Protecting Water Quality To Protecting States’ Rights: Fifty Years Of Supreme Court Clean Water Act Statutory Interpretation, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

In 1972, a bipartisan Congress enacted the Clean Water Act “to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.” Almost fifty years have passed since Congress enacted the law, and during that time, the Supreme Court has played a significant role in the administration and evolution of the law. Since the dawn of the environmental era in the 1970s, the Supreme Court has heard more cases involving the Clean Water Act than any other environmental law. However, the manner in which the Court has analyzed the law has changed substantially over the last half century. …

The Brand-X Effect: Declining Chevron Deference In The 21st Century, Stephen Johnson

Articles

Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. is the most frequently cited Supreme Court administrative law decision and has generated substantial scholarship over the past thirty-four ears. Almost three decades ago, Robert Glicksman and Christopher Schroeder examined the nature of judicial review of the actions of the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") by the federal courts during the agency's first twenty years of existence, focusing, in part, on the changing nature of that review in light of the Chevron decision. Glicksman and Schroeder concluded that the courts aggressively reviewed EPA's actions during the agency's early years, interpreting the …

Indeconstructible: The Triumph Of The Environmental “Administrative State”, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

Shortly after the 2017 Presidential inauguration, a senior advisor to the President proclaimed that a top priority of the Administration would be the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” A primary target of the Administration’s deconstruction efforts was the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) and federal environmental regulations.

While the President can use a variety of tools, including the appointment power, budget power, treaty power, and executive orders, to influence the manner in which the EPA and other agencies interpret and enforce laws, the President has very little power to unilaterally “deconstruct the administrative state.” The “administrative state” is a creation …

#Betterrules: The Appropriate Use Of Social Media In Rulemaking, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

In December 2015, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) use of various social media tools in a rulemaking under the Clean Water Act violated prohibitions in federal appropriations laws against publicity, propaganda, and lobbying. Although academics previously explored whether the use of technology in rulemaking might violate the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), the Paperwork Reduction Act, or the Federal Advisory Committee Act, none predicted that one of the first firestorms surrounding the use of social media in rulemaking would arise out of federal appropriations laws. ...

As the Administrative Conference of the United States …

Chevron, Greenwashing, And The Myth Of “Green Oil Companies”, Judd F. Sneirson

Articles

As green business practices grow in popularity, so does the temptation to “greenwash” one’s business to appear more environmentally and socially responsible than it actually is. We examined this phenomenon in an earlier paper, using BP and the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe as a case study and developing a framework for policing dubious claims of corporate social responsibility. This Article revisits these issues focusing on Chevron, an oil company that claims in its advertisements to care deeply about the environment and the communities in which it operates, even as it faces an $18 billion judgment for polluting the Ecuadorean Amazon and …

From Climate Change And Hurricanes To Ecological Nuisances: Common Law Remedies For Public Law Failures?, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

Part I of this article explores the role that the common law played in addressing environmental problems prior to the development of a robust public law regime in the 1970s and the changing role of common law as the new regime was implemented. Part II of the article examines the reasons why there has been a renaissance in common law actions and why the trend could continue. Part III of the article discusses the recent federal appellate court decisions that could accelerate the common law renaissance, as well as some other recent federal court decisions that could slow the renaissance. …

The Roberts Court And The Environment, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

During the October 2008 Term, the Supreme Court decided five cases that raised issues of environmental law and the environment was the loser in each case. While it may be difficult to characterize the decisions of the Roberts Court, generally, as “pro-environment” or “antienvironment,” a couple themes consistently appear in the Court’s decisions. First, in most of the environmental cases, the Court has adopted a position advocated or defended by a federal, state or local government when governmental interests are at issue. Second, in all of the cases that implicate federalism concerns, the Court has rendered decisions that favor States’ …

Race To The Left: A Legislator’S Guide To Greening A Corporate Code, Judd F. Sneirson

Articles

American corporate law tolerates green businesses. Green business decisions that are informed, disinterested, and made in the good-faith best interests of the firm will enjoy deference pursuant to the business judgment rule, whether the decisions maximize shareholder profits or sacrifice them in the name of sustainability. Corporate law generally stops there, however, and neither encourages green business efforts nor particularly discourages them.

States are more or less uniform in this approach, and thus new businesses selecting a state of incorporation have had no green basis for preferring one state’s corporate laws to those of another. Recent efforts in Oregon to …

Competition: The Next Generation Of Environmental Regulation?, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

Risk. In the environmental arena, when determining whether to regulate or how to regulate activities or products, policymakers must begin by assessing the level of risk presented by the activity or product. Although essential information about the level of risk is often in the hands of the actors or producers, they may be reluctant to provide this information to policymakers, unless they are compelled to do so, because the disclosure of information about the risk presented by their activity or product could reduce demand for their activity or product, increase potential liability for harm caused by their activity or product, …

Is Religion The Environment’S Last Best Hope? Targeting Change In Individual Behavior Through Personal Norm Activation, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

This Article explores the important role that religious organizations have played, and can play, in personal norm activation to influence change in individuals’ environmentally destructive actions. Part I of the Article describes the need for regulating or targeting individuals, in addition to industrial sources, in order to address many of the remaining significant environmental problems. Part II examines the advantages and disadvantages of targeting individual actions through command-and-control regulation, economic-based alternatives, and information disclosure programs. Part III outlines the concept of norm activation and details the manner in which information disclosure programs can be used to activate personal norms to …

Ossification’S Demise? An Empirical Analysis Of Epa Rulemaking From 2001-2005,, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

For more than a decade, academics have suggested agencies are increasingly avoiding notice and comment rulemaking because the process has become “ossified” by procedures imposed by Congress, courts and the Executive Branch, and because the rules ultimately issued by agencies are frequently challenged. This article reviews the rules the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued between 2001 and 2005 to determine the validity of those criticisms. With regard to judicial challenges, 75% of EPA’s most important (“economically significant”) rules issued between 2001 and 2005 were challenged in court. This is consistent with the anecdotal claims of former EPA Administrators …

Terrorism, Security, And Environmental Protection, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

Part I of this Article examines the post-September 11 trend of reduced access to environmental, health, and safety information. Part II introduces the tools that governments might use to protect the environment while protecting homeland security, including planning and information disclosure, command and control measures, and pollution prevention measures. Part II also criticizes the reliance on command and control measures as the primary means of addressing the security issues created by businesses that engage in activities that could harm the environment, health, or safety. Part III explores the advantages of planning and information disclosure programs over command and control programs …

Economics V. Equity Ii: The European Experience, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

Lawmakers in the European Union and its member states, like their counterparts in the United States, increasingly are using economic tools to protect the environment while reducing their focus on command and control regulation. The reliance on economic approaches to environmental protection may disproportionately impact low income and minority communities. Although evidence of environmental injustice in Europe is not as strong as in the United States, several recent studies demonstrate that traditional environmental protection measures in Europe have disproportionately funneled pollution to low income communities. Economic-based environmental measures can only exacerbate that trend.

Federal Regulation Of Isolated Wetlands After Swancc, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

This past January the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Clean Water Act (CWA) did not authorize the federal government to prohibit a landfill operator from filling isolated ponds on its property merely because the ponds were used as habitat by migratory birds. The National Association of Home Builders claimed that the decision in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (SWANCC) was "a major legal victory for home builders and other private property owners." Critics of the SWANCC decision argued that it jeopardizes "perhaps a fifth of the water bodies in the United …

Private Plaintiffs, Public Rights: Article Ii And Environmental Citizen Suits, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

This Article will focus on the Take Care Clause of Article II, the most serious of the Article II challenges to the environmental citizen suit provisions. Justice Scalia and legal commentators have argued that Article II prohibits a citizen from suing to enforce federal laws unless the citizen has suffered a concrete and personal ("individuated") injury as a result of the action that he is challenging. Professor Cass Sunstein and others have dissented, and have suggested that Congress can authorize citizens to sue to enforce federal laws even when the citizens have not suffered individuated injuries.

The first Part of …