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A Least Bad Approach For Interpreting Esa Stealth Provisions, Madeline June Kass

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Scholars have come to recognize the existence of certain stealthlike provisions neatly tucked within the text of the federal Endangered Species Act ("ESA"). At the time of enactment, these provisions-if not invisible to Congress-appeared at most innocuous or insignificant. As originally written, section 7 of the ESA constitutes one such stealth provision. Inconspicuously titled "Interagency cooperation,"1 the provision seemed little more than a humble procedural hoop to agency action. Judicial statutory interpretation, however, clarified that this seemingly docile procedural requirement in fact contained a formidable substantive mandate of the Act. A second stealth provision resides in section 8a of the …