Law Commons^™

Making Bureaucracies Think Distributively: Reforming The Administrative State With Action-Forcing Distributional Review, Kenta Tsuda

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

This Article proposes that agencies analyze the distributional impacts of major regulatory actions, subject to notice-and-comment procedures and judicial review. The proposal responds to the legitimacy crisis that the administrative state currently faces in a period of widening economic inequality. Other progressive reform proposals emphasize the need for democratization of agencies. But these reforms fail to address the two fundamental pitfalls of bureaucratic governance: the “knowledge problem”—epistemic limitations on centrally coordinated decision making—and the “incentives problem”—the challenge of aligning the incentives of administrative agents and their political principals.

A successful administrative reform must address both problems. Looking to the environmental …

The National Park System And Nepa: Non-Impairment In An Age Of Disruption, Jamison E. Colburn

Akron Law Review

We live in an age of disruption. “Disruptive innovations,” typically digital in nature, create new markets and value chains that grow and overthrow market leaders and other incumbents. The founders of our National Park System and National Park Service (NPS) had little sense of such disruption and, judging by how our park ideals have fared in recent decades, too little sense of how disruption works in nature, either. The parks embody a set of ideals and, as one of the most noted inventions of America’s democracy, sit in uneasy tension with the constant disruption of nature’s composition and function. The …

Trust Or Bust: Complications With Tribal Trust Obligations And Environmental Sovereignty, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

How Did Federal Environmental Impact Statements Address Climate Change In 2016?, Saloni Jain, Omri Klagsbald, Giovanna Leigh Crozier-Fitzgerald, Taylor Quinn, Elana Sulakshana

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

In partnership with the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, this project surveyed 31 federal environmental impact statements (EISs) published from September through November 2016. The objective was to evaluate how federal agencies were implementing the guidance released in August 2016 by the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) on how to account for climate change and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the environmental review process.

Environmental Law, Eleventh Circuit Survey, Travis M. Trimble

Scholarly Works

In 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit addressed, for the second time, whether the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) acted arbitrarily when it issued Nationwide Permit 21 (NWP 21), which authorizes dredge and fill activities by surface mining operations and applies differing standards to grandfathered operations and new operations. The court held that the Corps did not, and it upheld the permit. Also, the Eleventh Circuit held that the National Park Service did not act improperly under the Wilderness Act when it reduced the number of acres it considered to be eligible for designation as …

Legal Pathways For A Massive Increase In Utility-Scale Renewable Generation Capacity, Michael Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Decarbonizing the U.S. energy system will require a program of building onshore wind, offshore wind, utility-scale solar, and associated transmission that will exceed what has been done before in the United States by many times, every year out to 2050. These facilities, together with rooftop photovoltaics and other distributed generation, are required to replace most fossil fuel generation and to help furnish the added electricity that will be needed as many uses currently employing fossil fuels (especially passenger transportation and space and water heating) are electrified. This Article, excerpted from Michael B. Gerrard & John Dernbach, eds., Legal Pathways to …