Law Commons^™

Navigating Murky Waters: State-Level Strategies For Wetland Preservation And Tile Drainage Regulation After Sackett V. Epa, Caleb M. Swanson

Honors Thesis

Wetlands are some of the world’s most valuable ecosystems, serving as provisioners of species habitat, carbon sequestration, flood mitigation, water quality purification, and other ecosystem services. Human development has resulted in substantial wetland loss the world over. In the 1970s, the United States Congress passed the Clean Water Act, giving the EPA broad authority over wetland protection. However, in the summer of 2023, the United States Supreme Court decided Sackett v. EPA, limiting the EPA’s jurisdiction over wetlands to those indistinguishably connected to generally recognized “Waters of the United States” and removing federal protection for millions of acres of wetlands, …

Enforcing Higher Standards For Flood Hazard Mitigation In Vermont, Tamsin Flanders

Masters Theses

The state of Vermont faces increasing risk of costly damage from catastrophic flooding events as climate change increases the frequency of heavy rains and cumulative precipitation. In addition to increasing flood inundation risk, extreme precipitation events are leading to high rates damage from fluvial erosion—erosion caused by the force of floodwater and the materials it carries. As in all U.S. states, flood hazard governance in Vermont is shared by multiple levels of government and involves a complex compliance model that relies on local governments to regulate private property owners to achieve community, state, or federal goals.

To encourage municipalities to …

The State And Future Of Autonomous Vehicle Regulation In The United States, Nikolay Nyashin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Autonomous vehicle technology is poised to revolutionize transit around the world. There are currently tens of private companies either testing or building autonomous vehicles, including industry juggernauts like Ford and Google. This new mode of transportation falls into a regulatory grey area. Once cars reach full autonomy, governments will have to decide what entities will regulate them, where they will be allowed to drive, who will be responsible for them and a host of other issues. In some municipalities like San Francisco and Phoenix, autonomous vehicles (AVs) are being tested on public streets in real life conditions. Meanwhile, in 2017, …

Government Rule Compliance, Safety, And The Influence Of Regulation On Railroad Trainmen, Carlos Mendoza, Phd

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Operational testing of railroad trainmen on federal government safety rules is a daily occurrence on every railroad in the United States. This constant testing and resulting discipline distracts trainmen from the task at hand, causing a loss of focus which could lead to injury or accidents. Using the social construction framework, this research sought to gain an understanding of trainmen's perception on how operational testing impacts their workplace safety, as well as how they perceive the U.S. federal government influences regulation and discipline. This phenomenological study investigated a segment of railroad employees, the trainmen, because they are operationally tested more …

Professional Discretion And The Law: Impact Of Actuaries On The Underfunding And Decline Of Private Sector Single Employer Defined Benefit Pensions In Canada: How Many "Post Nortel" Pension Fiascos Are Brewing In Canada?, Paul Charles Walker

LLM Theses

Considering that private sector single employer defined benefit pension plans must be fully funded by law, the legal issue emanating from their systemic underfunding is whether or not actuaries have been using their discretion in a manner which is within a reasonable interpretation of the margin of manoeuvre contemplated by the legislature, in accordance with the principles of the rule of law. This thesis discusses the merits of potential legal remedies to arrest the underfunding and decline in the number of private sector single employer defined benefit pensions in Canada, including the introduction of single employer target benefit plans, increasing …