Natural Resources Law Commons^™

The Kolla Of Argentina: Neoliberal Trends And The Promise Of Law In The Process Of Reframing, Claiming And Maintaining Land Rights, Courtney C. Nussbaumer

The Macalester Review

Indigenous groups around the world have faced countless hardships—the Kolla of northwestern Argentina are no exception. While there is no doubt that the Kolla are a minority group both oppressed and marginalized, they have only recently begun to reconceptualize themselves as indigenous. Kolla identity struggles coupled with larger Latin American trends explained below make the Kolla an excellent case study to conceptualize the larger struggle between neoliberal governments and indigenous employment of international legal norms. Processes of legal globalization have led to the increasing codification of the collective rights of indigenous peoples in Latin America. This can be seen ...

Nepa And The Roan Plateau: Forcing The Bureau Of Land Management To Take A Hard Look, William Griffin

Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review

In 2007, the Bureau of Land Management adopted a resource management plan that essentially made all public land within the Roan Plateau Planning Area available for leasing to private oil and gas entities. Environmental groups alleged that the BLM, in adopting the plan, failed to satisfy the National Environmental Policy Act’s procedural requirements. In Colorado Environmental Coalition v. Salazar, the district court held that the BLM violated NEPA by failing to adequately consider the plan’s cumulative air quality effects. On remand, the court did not offer the agency any instructions in curing the procedural deficiency. The court’s ...

Saving Mabira Rainforest: Using Public Interest Litigation In Uganda To Save Mabira And Other Rainforests, Catherine Nampewo

Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review

In August 2011, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni announced that he planned to give away part of Mabira rainforest to a sugar corporation to grow a sugarcane plantation and enhance sugar production in the country. The President had made a similar proposal in 2007 and only abandoned it after public and environmental groups received it with immense resistance. The Ugandan government has also given away other forest land to private investors, including parts of Bugala Island in Lake Victoria to a vegetable company to grow palm trees. This Note argues that the Ugandans opposed to the give-away of forest land to ...

The Role Of The United States Army Corps Of Engineers In Land Use Control, Harry A. Jackson Jr.

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

International Law In A Time Of Scarcity, Ertharin Cousin, Rebecca H. White, C. Donald Johnson, Lincoln Davies, José Cuesta, Barbara Deutsch Lynch, Harlan G. Cohen, Gabriel Eckstein, Lillian Aponte Miranda, Kristen E. Boon, Peter A. Appel, Anastasia Telesetsky, Aparna Polavarapu, Felix Mormann, Diane Marie Amann, Katie Croghan

Conferences and Symposia

On February 5th, 2013 the Dean Rusk Center and the Georgia Journal for International and Comparative Law hosted a daylong conference on “International Law in a Time of Scarcity.”

The scarcity of resources, whether food, water, fuel sources, or clean air, may be a defining reality for global policy in the years to come. By bringing together leading policy makers and legal scholars, conference organizers created a forum to serve as a foundation for future scholarship on the role of international law in scarcity issues.

The keynote speaker was Ertharin Cousin, United Nations World Food Programme executive director and 1982 ...

Shifting Seas: The Law's Response To Changing Ocean Conditions, Casey Schickling

Sea Grant Fellows Publications

No abstract provided.

Hydrofracking: State Preemption, Local Power, And Cooperative Governance, John R. Nolon

Pace Law Faculty Publications

Advocates for the gas drilling technology known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, argue that it will bring significant economic benefits to the private and public sectors. Its opponents dispute these claims and point to significant environmental and public health risks associated with fracking—risks that must be considered in adopting government regulations needed to protect the public interest. One of the many issues raised by fracking is which level of government should regulate which aspects of the practice. This debate is complicated by the fact that the risks associated with fracking raise concerns of federal, state, and local importance and ...

Judicial Review Of Forest Service Decisions Made Pursuant To The National Forest Management Act's Substantive Requirements: Time For A Science Court?, Kristen Potter

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

This article is divided into five sections. Section I reviews the legal and historical background of forest law, culminating in NFMA, and establishes why many believe that the NFMA provides a greater role for courts. Section II presents the underpinnings of judicial review and deference to administrative agencies, such as the Forest Service. Section III provides examples of the deference applied in challenges to the Forest Service's attempted compliance with NFMA's diversity requirements. Section IV discusses the benefits and shortcomings of a specialized court in addressing the criticisms of the present system. Section V concludes that a specialized ...

Shaping Water Policy: Political Influences In The European Union And United States, Christopher Young

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

No abstract provided.

Land Use And Climate Change: Lawyers Negotiating Above Regulation, John R. Nolon

Pace Law Faculty Publications

Sea level rise requires a new paradigm for controlling the development of coastal lands that are in harm’s way, calling for adjustments in the law, legal practice, and legal education. This article discusses the historical tendency of the law to adjust to changes in society and the recent emergence of new legal institutions and strategies for mitigating and adapting to climate change, particularly sea level rise. It illustrates how the lack of certainty about the extent and pace of sea level rise collides with the total takings doctrine of the Lucas case to frustrate the application of traditional land ...

The Implementation Of The Animal Damage Control Act: A Comment On Wildlife Services's Methods Of Predatory Animal Control, Tiffany Bacon

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Limitations On Land Use Controls, Environmental Regulations And Governmental Exactions, 2013 Edition, Garrett Power

Book Gallery

This electronic book is published in a searchable PDF format as a part of the E-scholarship Repository of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. It is an “open content” casebook intended for classroom use in courses in Constitutional Law, Land Use Control, and Environmental Law and. It consists of 130 odd judicial opinions (most rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court) carefully selected from the two hundred years of American constitutional history which address the clash between public sovereignty and private property. The text considers both the personal right to liberty and the personal right in ...

Climate Change And Water Transfers, Christine A. Klein

Christine A. Klein

Climate change adaption is all about water. Although some governments have begun to plan for severe water disruptions, many have not. The consequences of inaction, however, may be dire. As a report of the U.N. Environment Programme warns, “countries that adopt a ‘wait and see’ approach potentially risk the lives of their people, their ecosystems and their economies.” In the United States, according to one study, nearly 60% of the states are unprepared to deal with the impending crisis. Responding to this void, we offer what we believe is the first comprehensive, state-by-state survey of water allocation law and ...

Commonwealth Edison Co. V. State Of Montana: Constitutional Limitations On State Energy Resource Taxation, Nancy K. Stalcup

Pepperdine Law Review

This note examines the case of Commonwealth Edison Co. v. State of Montana, where the United States Supreme Court analyzed and defined the permissible limitations of state energy resource taxation. While the Court adhered to the test of constitutional taxation established in Complete Auto Transit Inc. v. Brady, which strongly upheld a state's sovereign right to tax a local incident of interstate commerce, the Court failed to realize the practical ramifications of its ruling in the context o the nation's energy problems.

Top Leases And The Rule Against Perpetuities, J. Suzanne Hill

Pepperdine Law Review

The competition for oil and gas leases has resulted in an increase in the use of top leases to secure oil and gas leasehold estates. Top leases which are found to violate the Rule against Perpetuities could result in the loss of millions of dollars to the lessee. The author examines top leasing in light of the Rule against Perpetuities and concludes that absent a savings clause, such leases violate the Rule. A savings clause is proposed which would save an otherwise invalid lease thereby circumventing the harsh application of the Rule.

Hard, Soft & Uncertain: The Guarani Aquifer And The Challenges Of Transboundary Groundwater, David N. Cassuto

Pace Law Faculty Publications

This Article begins with an overview of the ecology of the Guarani Aquifer region before turning to the legal and ecological problems it faces. Because the majority of the Guarani Aquifer underlies Brazil (with the rest residing below Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay), the laws and policies of Brazil have a significant managerial impact. Consequently, the Brazilian legal regime forms the focus of the first Part of the Article. The Article then analyzes the international transboundary framework before turning to the recently enacted Agreement on the Guarani Aquifer. This Agreement, signed but not yet ratified by four countries, represents a major ...

Gaps In The Endangered Species Act: The Plight Of The Florida Panther, Jessica Alfano

Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review

In 2009 several environmental groups petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to initiate rulemaking to designate critical habitat for the Florida panther. In Conservancy of Southwest Florida v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Eleventh Circuit upheld the FWS’s decision. The appellate decision hinged largely on language in the Endangered Species Act that grants discretion to an agency in deciding whether to designate critical habitat for a species listed as endangered prior to the 1978 amendments to that Act. This Comment argues that the language relied upon by the court creates an arbitrary timestamp under which species ...

The Development Of Outer Continental Shelf Energy Resources, G. Kevin Jones

Pepperdine Law Review

An important source of oil and gas that has sparked much recent debate is the outer continental shelf (OCS). This article traces the history of the development of OCS energy resources as well as the official policies underlying federal governmental actions affecting the OCS. It also spotlights the basic conflict in terms of environmental concerns between coastal states and the federal government regarding their desired roles in the process of controlling OCS development.

Fear And Loathing On The California Coastline: Are Coastal Commission Property Exactions Constitutional?, Mitchell F. Disney

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Asteroids, The New Wester Frontier, Lauren E. Shaw

Lauren E Shaw

The existence of a right in property has long incentivized individuals to take on costly, time consuming, and even dangerous ventures. These ventures, like the extraction of coal, gas and oil from uncharted America back in the 1800’s, have led to developments that greatly benefit society as a whole. Today, we have advanced to the point where one of the next costly, time consuming, dangerous, yet potentially extreme advantageous undertakings is in asteroid mining. However, there is currently no law that directly addresses what rights a miner would have in resources extracted from an asteroid. While many have argued ...