Law Commons^™

Reconstituting Land-Use Federalism To Address Transitory And Perpetual Disasters: The Bimodal Federalism Framework, Blake Hudson

BYU Law Review

Scholars analyzing the intersection of federalism and disaster law and policy have primarily focused on the difficulties federalism poses for interjurisdictional coordination of disaster response. Though scholars have highlighted that rising disaster risks and costs are associated with “land-use planning that exacerbates, rather than mitigates, disaster risk,” a more holistic analysis of land-use-related disaster law and policy is needed. This Article provides a more comprehensive framework within which to analyze prospective mitigation or prevention of disaster risk and costs through a rebalancing—or reconstituting—of the respective roles of the federal and state governments in land-use planning. The federal government does not …

Geothermal Resources Under The Mining Law Regime--Problems & Possibilities, Richard A. Grisel

Richard A Grisel

The development of geothermal resources has been greatly hampered by the legal and institutional framework governing geothermal energy resources. This framework has been plagued by conflicting mining and water laws, anachronistic common law systems of property rights, problematic legal classifications of geothermal resources, and jurisdictional variances from state to state and between states and the Federal government. These issues have combined to significantly hinder the development of what will be a vital resource for our nation’s future energy needs.

This thesis concerns one way to address the suboptimal development of geothermal energy resources. Using the Federal acquisition of exclusive airspace …

Historia, Maendeleo Na Mabadiliko Ya Katiba Tanzania Tangu Uhuru Hadi Miaka Hamsini Ya Uhuru 9 Desemba 2011., Daudi Mwita Nyamaka Mr.

Daudi Mwita Nyamaka Mr.

Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania ni nchi iliyotokana na nchi mbili za Tanganyika na Zanzibari mwaka 1964, tangu uhuru wa Tanganyika 1961 na uhuru wa Zanzibari 1963 pamekuwapo na maendeleo ya kikatiba kwa upande wa Muungano na kwa Zanzibari ambayo hatuna budi kuyatazama kwa mapana yake hasa juu ya ushirikishwaji wa watu katika kuzipata katiba hizi.

Overview Of The Core Changes In The New Ethiopian Urban Land Leasehold Legislation, Belachew M. Fikre

Belachew M Fikre

Rural land administration has shown a significant improvement, inter alia, due to the implementation of the possession certification process. Whether or not this process of certification would bring the desired goal of 'sustainably conserving and developing natural resources and pass over to the coming generation through the development and implementation of a sustainable rural land use planning' is yet to be seen. This progress in the rural land administration is not matched by the urban land holding system. It is rather perplexing that the total houses in Addis Ababa without title deeds are more than the ones with title deeds. …

Lines In The Sand: Contrasting Advocacy Strategies For Environmental Protection In The Twenty-First Century, Joel R. Reynolds, Damon K. Nagami

UC Irvine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Electronic Contracts In Tanzania: An Appraisal Of The Legal Framework, Daudi Mwita Nyamaka Mr.

Daudi Mwita Nyamaka Mr.

The concern of our study was to examine the legal basis for electronic contracts in Tanzania. The major problems that were being examined are; the ascertainment of e-contract terms and the other party in the contract with the focus to consent i.e. consensus ad idem requirements and capacity to contract. With the first problem, e-commerce involves e-contracts and the business community in Tanzania enters into contractual arrangements with external world via websites or email in which case the electronic environment is not suitable in Tanzania in terms of the laws and the technology. Messages sent via internet may be garbled …

The Transatlantic Gmo Dispute Against The European Communities: Some Preliminary Thoughts, David A. Wirth

David A. Wirth

Any day now, a World Trade Organization panel is expected to rule in a dispute between the U.S. and the EU concerning market access for genetically-engineered foods and crops. This piece, written before the release of the WTO panel's report, analyzes novel systemic issues concerning the impact of WTO law on regulatory design, at both the national and international levels, that are raised by this dispute. These include (1) the application of WTO disciplines to regulatory schemes that require prior governmental approval to protect the environment and public health from newly-introduced products and substances; (2) the role of precaution as …

At War With The Environment, David A. Wirth

David A. Wirth

In this Article, Professor Wirth reviews the book National Defense and the Environment by Stephen Dycus, a recognized expert in both environmental and national security law. The emphasis of the book is on containing and remediating the environmental excesses of the American defense-industrial complex, with a domestic policy focus. While Professor Wirth considers Dycus’ work an intellectually rewarding and refreshing new entry into the ongoing environment-as-security colloquy, he does not consider the book to be accessible to a general audience given the book’s fundamentally legalistic nature.

Keynote Essay: A Modern Political Tribalism In Natural Resources Management, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

The first law of ecology holds that everything is connected to everything else. This conference addresses the challenges and dilemmas of resource management policy on America’s public lands, but it seems useful both for the purposes of the conference and in broader terms to note how resource management is connected to larger questions of global integrity and human governance. This essay explores a troubling fact of modern political life: As the problems of managing the economy and ecology of this nation become ever more complex, subtly-interrelated, pressured and demanding, our processes of legal and political governance might be expected to …

Clear The Air: Lopsided Journalism In Public Policy Debates, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

A point-counterpoint to Professor Plater's article, "Law and the Fourth Estate: Endangered Nature, the Press, and the Dicey Game of Democratic Governance, Environmental Law, 32 (2002): 1-36.

The Right To Counsel Fees In Public Interest Environmental Litigation, Zygmunt J.B. Plater, Joseph H. King Jr

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

No abstract provided.

Dealing With Dumb And Dumber: The Continuing Mission Of Citizen Environmentalism, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Surveying the history of citizen environmentalism in the context of environmental law and politics over the past fifty years, this essay hypothesizes five different categories of corporate, governmental, political, and individual actions that deserve to be called “dumb,” and the societal lessons that have been or could be learned from each. If there is truth to the wistful aphorism that “we learn from our mistakes,” then our society is in position to learn a great deal about our world and how it works, which perhaps provides some ground for hope for the years to come. Environmentalism embodies fundamentally rational and …

Environmental Law As A Mirror Of The Future: Civic Values Confronting Market Force Dynamics In A Time Of Counter-Revolution, Zygmunt J.B Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

No abstract provided.

From The Beginning, A Fundamental Shift Of Paradigms: A Theory And Short History Of Environmental Law, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

No abstract provided.

Coal Law From The Old World: A Perspective On Land Use And Environmental Regulation In The Coal Industries Of The United States, Great Britain, And West Germany, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

America’s reentry into the Coal Age has been one of the major consequences of the Mideast oil-producing nations’ discovery of their collective marketing power, and in this new emphasis on coal the United States is not alone. Like the United States, many industrialized nations with domestic coal reserves had allowed their coal industries to languish under the influence of low-priced, petroleum based energy economy and are now hastening to strengthen their coal production. Different nations approach the regulation of their resurgent coal industries in varying ways, however, and these differences can be instructive to American observers, particularly as they relate …

Endangered Species Act Lessons Over 30 Years, And The Legacy Of The Snail Darter, A Small Fish In A Pork Barrel, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Why is it – amidst the flood of environmental statutes that poured into the law books and national consciousness in the remarkable decade of the 1970s – that the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) stands out as quite uniquely different? This Essay briefly surveys the ESA’s differentness, its special political context, the citizen suit of great notoriety that fired up the ESA’s political hotseat back in 1975, and what has changed and what has not in the years since that first eco-legal outburst.

The Snail Darter, The Tellico Dam, And Sustainable Democracy — Lessons For The Next President From A Classic Environmental Law Controversy., Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

This presentation was the product of an invitation to speak at a symposium for students and faculty from a variety of different non-law departments at the University of Tennessee, where in 1973 I had started what became a six-year legal campaign to divert the Tennessee Valley Authority from impounding the last flowing 33 miles of the Little Tennessee River behind TVA’s Tellico Dam.

Through The Looking Glass Of Eminent Domain: Exploring The "Arbitrary And Capricious" Test And Substantive Rationality Review Of Governmental Decisions, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

The day-to-day realities of different systems of government can be discerned in the way they handle, in theory and practice, clashes between the individual and the collective will. The structure of contemporary American democracy is no exception. It is comprised of a variegated assortment of judicial formulae for balancing the interests of the individual and the state, most of these formulae tracing back with differing degrees of directness to textual bases in the first nine amendments to the federal Constitution or their state constitutional equivalents. One of these basic structural balancings, encountered early on by every student of American law …

In The Wake Of The Snail Darter: An Environmental Law Paradigm And Its Consequences, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Everything is connected to everything else: so goes the first law of ecology. This interconnectedness is reflected in environmental law as well, extending beyond natural science and particular resource conflicts to link environmental law intimately with the politics, philosophies, economics, and societal values that form its much larger context -- an ecology of human and natural systems. The Tellico Dam litigation reflected this interconnectedness. On its face, it was a simple environmental confrontation; it will be remembered as the "extreme" case of the little endangered fish, the snail darter, that almost stopped a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) dam. But if …

Law, Media, & Environmental Policy: A Fundamental Linkage In Sustainable Democratic Governance, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

The functional linkages between law and media have long been signficant in shaping American democratic governance. Over the past thirty-five years, environmental analysis has similarly become essential to shaping international and domestic governmental policy. Environmentalism—focusing as it does on realistic interconnected accounting of the full potential negative consequences as well as benefits of proposed actions, policies, and programs, over the long term as well as the short term, with careful consideration of all realistic alternatives— provides a legal perspective important for societal sustainability. Because environmental values and norms are often in tension with established industrial interests that resist public interest …

Through The Looking Glass Of Eminent Domain: Exploring The “Arbitrary And Capricious” Test And Substantive Rationality Review Of Governmental Decisions, Zygmunt J.B. Plater, William Lund Norine

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

No abstract provided.

Setting It Straight: A Thirtieth Anniversary Gathering In Memory Of The Little Tennessee River And Its Valley, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

No abstract provided.

The Takings Issue In A Natural Setting: Floodlines And The Police Power, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

No abstract provided.

Facing A Time Of Counter-Revolution: The Kepone Incident And A Review Of First Principles, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

The Kepone contamination episode of 1966-75 was a milestone that focused an entire nation’s attention on environmental hazards and our need to do better in recognizing and avoiding them. We have learned a great deal from that unfortunate story. The evolution of American environmental law since the Kepone debacle has repeatedly used the incident as a touchstone in identifying environmental pollution’s causes, effects, and potential solutions. This essay offers four propositions, about two things that have changed, and two things that have not, in the years since Kepone, taking account of where we are, and seeking some points of consensus.

Between Huntley And Salem: The Current State Of Municipal Authority In Pennsylvania To Affect Gas Drilling Through Zoning, Dan Raichel

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

This article examines the scope of Pennsylvania is preemption of municipal authority to zone natural gas drilling activities in light of two relatively recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Act and its local ordinance preemption provision. Although these cases define outer boundaries of permissible municipal regulation along the spectrum uf/possible zoning controls - i.e. what types ofordinance provisions would be either definitively permitted or preempted - substantial questions remain as to what extent a municipality may use traditional zoning power to zone gas drilling activities. This paper explores those grey areas, and attempts to assess …

The Interpretation Of Surface Easements In Severance Deeds As A Limit On Hydraulic Fracturing Practices, Rachel Heron, Justin S. Duclos, Shaun A. Goho

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

Hydraulic fracturing has driven a boom in natural gas production in the Marcellus Shale. While providing a growing source of domestic energy, this boom also raises signicant environmental concerns. Many of the impacts of hy draulic fracturing predominantly affect the inhabitants of the property where the drilling occurs. Yet when those inhabitants own only the surface estate, they have relatively little influence over whether and how the drilling occurs and will not profit from the gas extraction. This article provides a jurisdictional case stud4 set in West Virginia to assist in understanding the nuances relevant to an interpretation of the …

Land Use For Economic Development In Tough Financial Times, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The recession hit cities hard. Basic municipal staffs and services are being cut, debt is being restructured, capital projects delayed, and other cost cutting measures reported. The Congressional Budget Office reports that by November of last year there were 241,000 fewer municipal employees than there were three years earlier when the recession began. In its most recent report from city finance officers, the National League of Cities states that city spending cutbacks since 2009 are the largest since the survey was first taken, over twenty-five years ago. Despite this serious trend, municipalities have not defaulted in debt payment and there …

Anti-Sprawl Initiatives: How Complete Is The Convergence Of Environmental, Desegregationist And Fair Housing Interests?, Zoë Prebble

Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal

No abstract provided.

What Has Love Got To Do With It?:Sentimental Attachments And Legal Decision-Making, David L. Markell, Tom Tyler, Sarah Brosnan

david l markell

Our underlying premise in this article is that a government is likely to bolster its legitimacy when it uses legal decision-making procedures in which the public has confidence. Our findings, which are based on a survey about options for resolving disputes in the land use arena, identify an important anomaly in public preferences. While people generally preferred to resolve disputes through judicial adjudication, they did not prefer to have the courts make decisions involving sentimental value. These findings suggest that it is not possible to paint a simple picture of public procedural preferences because those preferences shift depending upon the …

Assessment Of Organic And Inorganic Phosphorus In Soils Derived From Cretaceous Sediments And Basement Complex Soils Of Guinea Savannah Of Kogi State, North Central Nigeria, Sunday I. Amhakhian, H H. Isitekhale, Charles I. Oyewole

Confluence Journal Environmental Studies (CJES), Kogi State University, Nigeria

A pot experiment was carried out using 20 surface soils (0-15cm depth) in 2008 to assess soil organic phosphorus and some fraction of inorganic phosphorus in other to know their availability in the soils of the studied area and also work have not been done in this areas in respect to organic and in-organic phosphorus. The experiment was conducted using 20 soils 10 from each geological formation (Cretaceous sediments and Basement complex soils), respectively. The mean organic phosphorus of 63.51 mgkg 1 soil was obtained for Cretaceous sediment soils and 158.54 mgkg 1 soil for the basement complex soils respectively. …