Law Commons^™

Historic Preservation Law In A Nutshell (2d Ed.), Sara C. Bronin, Ryan M. Rowberry

Ryan Rowberry

Climate Change Under Nepa: Avoiding Cursory Consideration Of Greenhouse Gases, Amy L. Stein

Amy L. Stein

Neither the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) nor its implementing regulations require consideration of climate change in NEPA documentation. Yet an ever-growing body of NEPA case law related to climate change is making it increasingly difficult for a federal agency to avoid discussing the impacts of those emissions under NEPA in its Environmental Impact Statements (“EISs”). Although consideration of climate change in NEPA documents sounds right in theory, within the current legal framework, the NEPA documents provide only lip service to the goals of NEPA without any meaningful consideration of climate change. An empirical evaluation of two years of selected …

Historic Preservation Law In A Nutshell, Sara Bronin, Ryan Rowberry

Sara C. Bronin

The purpose of this book is to provide a concise, coherent reference for the emerging field of historic preservation law for lawyers, policymakers, planners, architects, and students alike. We consider preservation law to be “emerging” because it began to fully develop in the United States only in the last fifty years. Two key transition points happened at the federal level: the 1966 passage of the National Historic Preservation Act and the 1978 Penn Central Supreme Court decision, which upheld a landmarks law against a constitutional challenge and consequently encouraged other localities to adopt similar ordinances. (Of course, this book covers …

Historic Preservation Law, Sara Bronin, J Byrne

Sara C. Bronin

This book was written for anyone interested in the increasingly important area of historic preservation law. With this book, we hope to advance and encourage the teaching of preservation law, shape the way the field is conceived, and create a practical resource that will be consulted by attorneys and other preservation professionals. Our approach to the subject is reasonably straightforward. We present the most significant legal issues in preservation and place them in a contemporary context, identifying contested questions and areas of reform. The format of the book is traditional: edited leading cases with notes that provide explanation, extension, and …

A Functional Approach To Risks And Uncertainties Under Nepa, Todd Aagaard

Todd S Aagaard

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) mandates that federal agencies evaluate the environmental impacts of their proposed actions. This requires agencies to make ex ante predictions about environmental consequences that often involve a significant degree of factual risk or uncertainty. Considerable controversy exists regarding how agencies should address such risks and uncertainties. Current NEPA law adopts a largely ad hoc approach that lacks coherence and analytical rigor. Some environmentalists and legal scholars have called for a greater emphasis on worst-case analysis in environmental planning, especially after the recent Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the meltdowns …

Navigating The U.S. Transition To Sustainability: Matching National Governance Challenges With Appropriate Legal Tools, John Dernbach

John C. Dernbach

Sustainable development would require the United States to maintain and improve human prosperity while at the same time greatly reducing its consumption of energy, materials, water, and land. The scope of the challenge includes, but is not limited to, climate change. This Article suggests the elements of a legal structure for achieving sustainability.

Because achieving sustainable development is a significant learning experience, the United States will need to employ a form of governance—reflexive governance—that requires constant learning and supportive citizens and stakeholders who are also working to ensure sustainability in their own activities. The two basic problems reflexive governance must …