Environmental Law Commons^™

The Rhetoric And Reality Of Nature Protection: Toward A New Discourse, Holly Doremus

Holly Doremus

No abstract provided.

Closing The Regulatory Gap In Michigan's Public Trust Doctrine: Saving Michigan Millions With Statutory Reform, Kelsey Breck

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The Great Lakes are some of Michigan's most valuable and important environmental resources. The public trust doctrine requires Michigan to protect and preserve the lands along the shores of the Great Lakes for the use of future generations. Unfortunately, the public trust doctrine in Michigan is in disarray and as a result, public and private rights to the lands along the Great Lakes are poorly delineated. This Note presents an economic argument for why the public trust doctrine should be reformed to better define public and private rights to the land along Michigan's Great Lakes. It also suggests a statutory …

The Use Of The Public Trust Doctrine As A Management Tool Over Public And Private Lands, Patricia E. Salkin

Patricia E. Salkin

No abstract provided.

The Human Right To Water: Will Its Fulfillment Contribute To Environmental Degradation?, Alezah Trigueros

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Human rights and environmental protection are two often overlapping bodies of law, each of which by their nature seeks to take priority over other applicable law. For this reason, these two bodies of law often find themselves in tension with one another. This Note aims to illustrate the tension between human rights and environmental protection in the context of the recent push for a codified human right to water. My thesis is that ideally these two bodies of law should balance each other out-a human right to water would be subject to environmental safeguards, and, likewise, conservation efforts would be …

Foreign Investment Contracts In The Oil & Gas Sector: A Survey Of Environmentally Relevant Clauses, Kyla Tienhaara

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Investment Agreements & Sustainable Development: The Non-Discrimination Standards, Marcos Orellana

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Environmental Justice With Chinese Characteristics: Recent Developments In Using Environmental Public Interest Litigation To Strengthen Access To Environmental Justice, Jingjing Liu

Florida A & M University Law Review

China's unprecedented economic growth and rapid urbanization in the past three decades has exerted a heavy toll on the country's environment. Set against the backdrop of China's daunting environmental challenges, this article will first discuss how the environmental justice issue manifests itself on Chinese soil and how its evolvement differs from the American experience. This discussion will be followed by an analysis on how environmental public interest litigation, inspired by citizen suits in the U.S., has been fermenting in China and advocated by environmentalists as a new approach to broaden and strengthen access to environmental justice. The article will then …

Going Rogue: Stop The Beach Renourishment As An Object Of Morbid Fascination, Mary Doyle, Stephen J. Schnably

Articles

Scholarly response to the Supreme Court's decision in Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection has focused on the plurality's strong advocacy of a judicial takings doctrine. We take a different tack. While the concept of judicial takings is worthy of serious attention, it is wrong to treat the plurality opinion as an ordinary object of analysis. It is, instead, the emanation of a Court going rogue.

Three basic symptoms of the pathology stand out. First, sleight of hand. The plurality opinion purports to be about an institutional issue-can a state court commit a taking? - …

Is A Substantive, Non-Positivist United States Environmental Law Possible?, Dan Tarlock

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

U.S. environmental law is almost exclusively positive and procedural. The foundation is the pollution control and biodiversity conservation statutes enacted primarily between 1969–1980 and judicial decisions interpreting them. This law has created detailed processes for making decisions but has produced few substantive constraints on private and public decisions which impair the environment. Several substantive candidates have been proposed, such as the common law, a constitutional right to a healthy environment, the public trust, and the extension of rights to fauna and flora. However, these candidates have not produced the hoped for substantive law. Many argue that a substantive U.S. environmental …

Water Rights, Markets, And Changing Ecological Conditions, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

Conventional environmentalist thought is suspicious of private markets and property rights. The prospect of global climate change, and consequent ecological disruptions, has fueled the call for additional limitations on private markets and property rights. This essay, written for the Environmental Law Symposium on 21st Century Water Law, presents an alternative view. Specifically, this essay briefly explains why environmental problems generally, and the prospect of changing environmental conditions such as those brought about by climate change in particular, do not counsel further restrictions on private property rights and markets. To the contrary, the prospect of significant environmental changes strengthens the case …

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

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

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 …

The Quest For A Sustainable Future And The Dawn Of A New Journal At Michigan Law, David M. Uhlmann

Articles

When I joined the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School in 2007, the first assignment I gave students in my Environmental Law and Policy class was John McPhee's Encounters with the Archdruid. It must have seemed like a curious choice to them, particularly coming from a professor who just three months earlier had been the Chief of the Environmental Crimes Section at the U.S. Department of Justice. The book was not a dramatic tale of courtroom battles. In fact, the book was not even about the law, and the clash of environmental values it depicted pre-dated the environmental …