Law Commons^™

Habitat Federalism, Robert L. Fischman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

THE COMMON IMAGE OF COOPERATIVE FEDERALISM INVOLVES the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) inducing states to adopt permit and other pollution abatement programs. States can tailor some standards, but public health benchmarks and end-of-the-pipe technologies are uniform across the nation. Inducements include both carrots, mostly in the form of federal funds and flexibility, and sticks, mostly in the form of penalties and loss of control.

This essay discusses cooperative federalism for habitat conservation. Habitat federalism focuses more on ecology than chemistry, more on cities and counties than states, and more on place-based variation than on uniform standards. It is about how …

When Is Two A Crowd: The Impact Of Federal Action On State Environmental Regulation, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

This article seeks to identify the ways in which federal actions can influence state regulatory choices in the context of environmental policy. The federal government may directly influence state policy choices by preempting state policies or by inducing state cooperation through the use of various incentives and penalties for state action. The federal government may indirectly, and perhaps unintentionally, influence state policy choices as well. Federal policies may encourage greater state regulation by reducing the costs of initiating regulatory action or by placing issues on state policy agendas. Federal regulation may also discourage or even "crowd-out" state-level regulatory action by …