Law Commons^™

Fears, Faith, And Facts In Environmental Law, William W. Buzbee

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Environmental law has long been shaped by both the particular nature of environmental harms and by the actors and institutions that cause such harms or can address them. This nation’s environmental statutes remain far from perfect, and a comprehensive law tailored to the challenges of climate change is still elusive. Nonetheless, America’s environmental laws provide lofty, express protective purposes and findings about reasons for their enactment. They also clearly state health and environmental goals, provide tailored criteria for action, and utilize procedures and diverse regulatory tools that reflect nuanced choices.

But the news is far from good. Despite the ambitious …

Maurer Environmental Law Expert Is Lead Author On Science Insights Policy Forum Article, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

The Indiana University Maurer and McKinney Schools of Law jointly will convene leading scholars and practitioners to discuss the implications of the 2023 United States Supreme Court case of Sackett v. EPA. The event, “Sackett v. EPA: What the Supreme Court’s Decision Means for Regulation and Wetlands Conservation,” will take place November 10 in the Wynne Courtroom and Steve Tuchman and Reed Bobrick Atrium at IU McKinney in Indianapolis.

The Remaking Of The Supreme Court: Implications For Climate Change Litigation & Regulation, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

With the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court is a Senate vote away from a historic shakeup that will cement a conservative judicial majority for decades. While politicians, scholars, and the media have largely focused on what a Barrett nomination means for the Affordable Care Act and Roe v. Wade, the confirmation of Barrett would significantly impact a wide swath of environmental and climate change cases for years to come. As the Supreme Court is on the brink of a generational transformation, it is increasingly clear that we have a generation—and no longer—to reduce our Greenhouse …

Litigating Epa Rules: A Fifty-Year Retrospective Of Environmental Rulemaking In The Courts, Cary Coglianese, Daniel E. Walters

All Faculty Scholarship

Over the last fifty years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found itself repeatedly defending its regulations before federal judges. The agency’s engagement with the federal judiciary has resulted in prominent Supreme Court decisions, such as Chevron v. NRDC and Massachusetts v. EPA, which have left a lasting imprint on federal administrative law. Such prominent litigation has also fostered, for many observers, a longstanding impression of an agency besieged by litigation. In particular, many lawyers and scholars have long believed that unhappy businesses or environmental groups challenge nearly every EPA rule in court. Although some empirical studies have …

Reconstituting The Federalism Battle In Energy Transportation, Jim Rossi, Alexandra B. Klass

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article explores the growing federalism tensions in efforts to expand the nation’s energy transportation infrastructure — the electric transmission lines, natural gas pipelines, natural gas import and export terminals and related infrastructure that power the U.S. electricity and transportation systems. It uses two illustrations — one involving an interstate electric transmission line (subject to state jurisdiction) and one involving and an interstate natural gas pipeline (subject to federal jurisdiction) — to highlight how the clear jurisdictional lines between federal and state authority over these projects created decades ago is no longer adequate for today’s energy needs. We believe that …

Ferc V. Epsa And The Path To A Cleaner Electricity Sector, Joel B. Eisen

Law Faculty Publications

This article analyzes the impact of FERC v. Electric Power Supply Association, in which the Supreme Court upheld FERC’s demand response rule (Order 745) and confirmed FERC’s authority over “practices” “directly affecting” wholesale rates for electricity. It contends that the Supreme Court made a definitive pronouncement on FERC’s authority over end users of electricity who also provide resources back to the electric grid. It also contends that FERC v. EPSA marks the end of “dual federalism” in electricity law that treated federal and state jurisdiction as separate and distinct spheres of authority. Instead, it posits a new era of concurrent …

Raisins And Resilience: Elaborating Home's Compensation Analysis With An Eye To Coastal Climate Change Adaptation, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The State of New Jersey, the Borough of Harvey Cedars, and the United States Army Corps of Engineers were all preparing for an event like Hurricane Sandy years before the 2012 super-storm made landfall along the Mid-Atlantic coast. The governments began, for instance, a major dune restoration project in 2005 in order to protect the New Jersey coast from massive storm surges that could destroy homes and businesses. To carry out the effort, the local governments sought to purchase the right to build along the seaward portion of property owners' land, and would then construct roughly twenty-foot-high, thirty-foot-wide dunes. If …

Ferc’S Expansive Authority To Transform The Electric Grid, Joel B. Eisen

Law Faculty Publications

Using an unprecedented historical analysis of over 100 years of law dating to the Progressive Era, this Article concludes that the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) v. Electric Power Supply Association properly asserted that FERC has ample authority to pursue broad environmental and energy goals in transforming the electric grid. Building on the Court’s finding that FERC may regulate “practices” that “directly affect” rates in wholesale electricity markets, the analysis develops a detailed standard that is consistent with interpretation of regulatory statutes in each of three distinct eras: the Progressive Era, the era of regulation …

Standing To View Other People's Land: The D.C. Circuit's Divided Decision In Sierra Club V. Jewell, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In its divided 2014 decision in Sierra Club v. Jewell, the D.C. Circuit held that plaintiffs who observe landscape have Article III standing to sue in federal court to protect those views even if they have no legal right to physically enter the private property that they view. The D.C. Circuit’s decision could significantly enlarge the standing of plaintiffs to sue federal agencies or private parties over changes to private lands that the plaintiffs have no right to enter. Because the Supreme Court has inconsistently applied both strict and liberal approaches to standing, it is difficult to predict how it …

Isolated Wetland Commons And The Constitution, Blake Hudson, Michael Hardig

Journal Articles

Isolated wetlands provide great ecological and economic value to the United States. While some states provide protection for isolated wetlands, a great many do not. These wetlands are also left outside the ambit of federal wetland regulatory protections under the Clean Water Act, with its murky jurisdictional reach. Notwithstanding jurisdictional questions under current federal statutes, the U.S. Supreme Court has gone so far as to call into question the constitutionality of federal isolated wetland regulation. This Article makes a normative argument that, in the absence of state or local programs providing holistic isolated wetland protection, federal action is needed. The …

Going Rogue: Stop The Beach Renourishment As An Object Of Morbid Fascination, Mary Doyle, Stephen J. Schnably

Articles

Scholarly response to the Supreme Court's decision in Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection has focused on the plurality's strong advocacy of a judicial takings doctrine. We take a different tack. While the concept of judicial takings is worthy of serious attention, it is wrong to treat the plurality opinion as an ordinary object of analysis. It is, instead, the emanation of a Court going rogue.

Three basic symptoms of the pathology stand out. First, sleight of hand. The plurality opinion purports to be about an institutional issue-can a state court commit a taking? - …

The Endangered Species Act's Fall From Grace In The Supreme Court, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Thirty-five years ago, the Endangered Species Act ("ESA") had as auspicious a debut in the U.S. Supreme Court as any statute could hope for. In Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, a majority of the Court proclaimed that the ESA was intended "to halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction, whatever the cost" and backed up those and other bold words by preventing a nearly completed federal dam from impounding its reservoir because doing so would eliminate the only known (at the time) habitat of a small fish, the now infamous snail darter. To this day, Hill remains actively discussed …

Massachusetts V Epa: Escaping The Common Law's Growing Shadow, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

In its first full Term with its newest member, the U.S. Supreme Court marched decidedly to the right with decisions narrowing abortion rights, striking down affirmative action programs, invalidating campaign finance regulations, and making it more difficult for victims of employment discrimination to seek redress. In the face of this rightward shift the most surprising decision of the Term was the Court’s embrace of claims that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had acted unlawfully by refusing to use the Clean Air Act to combat climate change. In Massachusetts v EPA, the Court held that EPA had the authority to …

Environmental Law In The Supreme Court: Highlights From The Blackmun Papers, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

The papers of the late Justice Harry A. Blackmun provide a remarkably rich archive that documents how the Court, for nearly a quarter century, handled environmental cases during a period crucial to the development of environmental law. This Article reviews highlights of what the Blackmun papers reveal about the U.S. Supreme Court’s handling of environmental cases during Justice Blackmun’s service on the Court from 1970 to 1994. The Article first examines what new light the Blackmun papers shed on some of the principal findings of the author’s October 1993 article Environmental Law in the Supreme Court: Highlights from the Marshall …

Can Congress Regulate Intrastate Endangered Species Under The Commerce Clause?, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In Spring 2003, both the 5th Circuit and the D.C. Circuit agreed that Congress has the authority under the Commerce Clause to protect intrastate endangered species on private lands under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), but used completely opposite reasoning to reach the same result. The 5th Circuit in GDF Realty v. Norton rejected the government's argument that the economic impact of the commercial development regulated under the statute was the appropriate focus for whether the statute has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Instead, the 5th Circuit concluded that intrastate spiders and beetles, which have no economic value, do …

Citizens To Preserve Overton Park V. Volpe, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

This essay is one of a series destined to appear in a Foundation Press book, Administrative Law Stories, now set for publication in the fall of 2005. The decision in Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe represents a transition from political to judicial controls over decisions broadly affecting a wide range of community interests. Unmistakable and dramatic as it is, that transition is not universally applauded. But the transition was striking and quick. The late sixties and early seventies saw an explosion of new national legislation on social and environmental issues, that often provided explicitly or implicitly for citizen …

The Effect Of The Supreme Court's Eleventh Amendment Jurisprudence On Environmental Citizen Suits: Gotcha!, Hope M. Babcock

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The current Supreme Court has substantially expanded the scope of protection from lawsuits accorded to states by the Eleventh Amendment and narrowed the exceptions to its application. As a result, many people are finding they are unable to vindicate federal rights in any court when the defendant is a state or a state agency. The most recent example of this is the Court's decision in South Carolina State Ports Authority v. Federal Maritime Commission, in which the Court extended the reach of the Eleventh Amendment to private administrative enforcement actions against states, thus forsaking completely any connection to the …

Protecting Intrastate Threatened Species: Does The Endangered Species Act Encroach On Traditional State Authority And Exceed The Outer Limits Of The Commerce Clause, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

After the Supreme Court decided Lopez, a number of commentators speculated about its impact on the Endangered Species Act. This Article reexamines the issue in light of Morrison and SWANCC. Part V demonstrates that, even after Lopez, Morrison, and SWANCC, the Commerce Clause reaches federal regulation of intrastate endangered or threatened species because conservation of such species has traditionally been a shared federal and state function that recognizes the legitimacy of federal regulation whenever the need for preservation is great and states have failed to address important conservation issues. Additionally, Part V shows federal regulation of endangered or threatened species …

Textualism’S Limits On The Administrative State: Of Isolated Waters, Barking Dogs, And Chevron, Michael P. Healy

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County (SWANCC) v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Supreme Court recently held that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) does not have authority under the Clean Water Act (the Act or the CWA) to regulate the filling of “other waters.” This decision demonstrates a major shift in the Court's approach to statutory interpretation, particularly in the context of reviewing an agency’s understanding of a statute. The significance of the case is best gauged by contrasting it with United States v. Riverside Bayview Homes, Inc. There, the Court, acting …

Standing In Environmental Citizen Suits: Laidlaw’S Clarification Of The Injury-In-Fact And Redressability Requirements, Michael P. Healy

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In its first week of business during the new millennium, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., and provided important clarifications about the law of standing in environmental citizen suits. Specifically, the Court rejected the narrow view of environmental injury-in-fact advocated by Justice Scalia and instead adhered to the broader view of injury-in-fact established in a nonenvironmental context by the Court's decision in Federal Elections Commission v. Akins. As importantly, the Court also addressed the redressability requirement of Article III standing in Laidlaw. Here too, the Court did …

Is There A Private Cause Of Action Under Epa's Title Vi Regulations?: The Need To Empower Environmental Justice Plaintiffs, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This article will apply the Chester three-factor test to find a private right of action implied in the administrative regulations promulgated by various agencies to implement Section 602 of Title VI. This article also proposes that it would be inconsistent to apply today's more stringent standard for inferring congressional intent in deciding whether a private right exists under Section 602. Such inconsistency arises as a result of the Supreme Court's application of a more lenient standard in recognizing a private right of action under Section 601.

Is A Textualist Approach To Statutory Interpretation Pro-Environmentalist?: Why Pragmatic Agency Decisionmaking Is Better Than Judicial Literalism, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This Article provides both anecdotal evidence and a more theoretical argument for why textualist statutory interpretation is not the best approach to address environmental. issues.

The Supreme Court And The Endangered Species Act (Symposium: The Supreme Court And Local Government Law: 1994-95 Term), Leon D. Lazer

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Regulation Of Water Use And Takings—The Government Lawyer’S Perspective, Richard M. Frank

Regulatory Takings and Resources: What Are the Constitutional Limits? (Summer Conference, June 13-15)

11 pages.

Contains 3 pages of references.

Management Approaches To Addressing Takings Issues: Endangered Species Protection, I. Michael Heyman

Regulatory Takings and Resources: What Are the Constitutional Limits? (Summer Conference, June 13-15)

15 pages.

Contains footnotes.

The Endangered Species Act And Constitutional Takings, Robert Meltz

Regulatory Takings and Resources: What Are the Constitutional Limits? (Summer Conference, June 13-15)

18 pages.

Contains references.

Regulatory Takings And Resources: What Are The Constitutional Limits?, Virginia S. Albrecht

Regulatory Takings and Resources: What Are the Constitutional Limits? (Summer Conference, June 13-15)

52 pages.

Contains footnotes.

Environmental Law In The Supreme Court: Highlights From The Marshall Papers, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

Justice Marshall served on the Court from 1967 until 1991. During that period, Congress passed all of the major federal environmental statutes and environmental regulation mushroomed. As a result, the Marshall papers reveal how the Court reached decisions that have shaped modern environmental law. The author, a former law clerk to former Justice Byron White and an associate professor of law at the University of Maryland, begins by describing the history of the Court's treatment of environmental disputes. He then discusses the steps the Justices take in deciding whether to accept cases for review; in reaching decisions on the merits …

Environmental Law (Symposium: The Supreme Court And Local Government Law: The 1989-90 Term), Leon D. Lazer

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Viability Of Citizens’ Suits Under The Clean Water Act After Gwaltney Of Smithfield V. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Bevery Mcqueary Smith

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.