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In Defense Of 2.0°C: The Value Of Aspirational Environmental Goals, Albert C. Lin

Texas A&M Law Review

Aspirational goals, such as the Paris Agreement’s goals of avoiding a global temperature increase of 1.5°C or 2.0°C, can be found throughout environmental law. Such goals, though sometimes unrealistic, perform important functions. They may serve as asymptotic directives that guide implementing entities; yardsticks to measure and evaluate progress; expressions of social values; and expanders of policy space. As asymptotic directives, aspirational goals may push actors to achieve more than they otherwise might accomplish. Incorporated into treaties or statutes, they can serve as guideposts for implementing concrete substantive and procedural requirements. With the passage of time, aspirational goals function as yardsticks …

Adequate, But Not Ideal: The U.S. Navy’S Need To Refine Its Administrative Separation Board Procedures, Sierra Ross

Texas A&M Law Review

While the Navy is likely not mandated by the Constitution to edit its procedures for Administrative Separation Boards, it should do so. Service members can be subject to a variety of serious consequences through Administrative Separation Boards, so the processes should be as effective as possible to ensure that they are adequately protected.

To improve the Administrative Separation Board Procedures for the United States Navy, this Comment suggests two policy changes. First, this Comment suggests that the Navy provide more training to Senior Members to ensure they are implementing the existing evidence rule correctly. Second, this Comment suggests that the …

Turning Point: Green Industrial Policy And The Future Of U.S. Climate Action, Daniel A. Farber

Texas A&M Law Review

In the first two years of the Biden presidency, Congress passed three massive funding bills, which poured hundreds of billions of dollars into clean energy infrastructure, research and development, and deployment of clean energy. Although these bills are not what lawyers are accustomed to thinking of as “environmental law,” they have the potential to launch a transformation of the energy sector. This development could not have come at a better time, given the Supreme Court’s increasingly skeptical attitude toward federal regulation.

Although the direct effect of these laws will be dramatic, this Article focuses on positive feedback loops that will …

Carrots, Sticks, And The Evolution Of U.S. Climate Policy, Brian Murray, Jonas Monast

Texas A&M Law Review

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), enacted by Congress in 2022, is the most significant federal investment in decarbonization in U.S. history. The law makes hundreds of billions of dollars available for clean energy tax credits, grants to state and local governments, and other financial incentives for public and private investments. The IRA’s focus on incentives, or “carrots,” marks a significant departure from the emphasis on prescriptive regulations and penalties, or “sticks,” that are prominent in federal and state climate policies that predate the IRA. This Article situates the IRA within the existing climate policy framework and explores the long-term impacts …

The Perennial Eclipse: Race, Immigration, And How Latinx Count In American Politics, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Evenwel v. Abbott, a case challenging the use of total population in state legislative apportionment as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The plaintiffs sued Texas, alleging that the State impermissibly diluted their voting power because they lived in areas with a high proportion of voting-age citizens. When total population was used to draw district lines, the plaintiffs had to compete with more voters to get their desired electoral outcomes than was true for voters in districts with low proportions of voting-age citizens. The Court rejected the argument, finding that states enjoy …

The Submerged Administrative State, Gabriel Scheffler, Daniel E. Walters

Faculty Scholarship

The United States government is experiencing a reputation crisis: after decades of declining public trust, many Americans have lost confidence in the government’s capacity to perform its basic functions. While various explanations have been offered for this worrying trend, these existing accounts overlook a key factor: people are unfamiliar with the institutions that actually do most of the governing—administrative agencies—and they devalue what they cannot easily observe. The “submerged” nature of the administrative state is, we argue, a central reason for declining trust in government.

This Article shows that the administrative state is systematically submerged in two ways. First, administrative …

Climate Change And Implications For National Security And International Law In The Arctic, Choteau X. Kammel

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Climate change threatens national security due to the potential it carries to destabilize fragile regions, damage military installations, and exacerbate existing tensions between countries. While these effects will be global, the Arctic region represents a microcosm of a future where climate change affects the strategic priorities of states and renders existing governing institutions inadequate. Moreover, climate change will challenge the collage of “soft” international law that governs the Arctic, administered primarily through the Arctic Council’s collaborative forum. While this system has been effective, the opening of the Far North to increased sea passage, commercial exploitation, and great powers’ interests necessitates …

Full Speed Ahead? Reexamining Texas's Approach To Eminent Domain, Emma Blackmon

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Property rights are traditionally held sacred in Texas. But through eminent domain, landowners lose their property rights, purportedly in service of the broader public. Sometimes, the legislature confers eminent domain power on for-profit companies. Landowners are then forced to surrender their property while the companies benefit economically. The result is that landowners are stripped of the right to fully use and enjoy their property.

The recent Texas Supreme Court case, Miles v. Texas Central Railroad & Infrastructure, Inc., demonstrates the tension between property rights and economic development created by eminent domain. Facially, Miles concerns whether a for-profit company’s high-speed …

All Aboard: Understanding Property Rights In Texas After Texas Central, Asher K. Gregg

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Our forefathers intended the United States Bill of Rights to protect individuals from government overreach. Specifically, the Fifth Amendment, as applied to the States via the Fourteenth Amendment, in part protects individuals from unnecessary takings. Eminent domain authority—its more common name—has long been recognized as a power to be used cautiously and only when necessary. Although most often associated with government exercise, states are permitted to grant this unyielding authority to private entities via their state constitutions and statutes. Despite Texas serving as a beacon for individual property rights, the Texas Supreme Court’s recent decision in Miles v. Texas Central …

Operationalising Progressive Ideas About Property: Resilient Property, Scale, And Systemic Compromise, Lorna Fox O'Mahony, Marc Roark

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Property theory is at a crossroads. In recent decades, scholars seeking to advance progressive ideas about property have embraced ‘Progressive Property’ theories that seek to advance the goals of social justice and the common good, offering a vital counter-weight to utilitarian and neo-conservative accounts of property. Progressive Property theories seek to correct an imbalance in American property discourse which—across the temporal scale—has sustained a range of narratives and normative commitments, but which has veered towards extreme acquisitive individualism and the rhetoric of property absolutism since the 1970s. The idea that individual property rights are not absolute but defined by the …

Evolving Sovereignty Relationships Between Affiliated Jurisdictions: Lessons For Native American Jurisdictions, Vaughan Carter, Charlotte Ku, Andrew P. Morriss

Faculty Scholarship

Though sovereignty is principally associated with governance over a territory and freedom to act in the international arena, this article examines sovereignty as empowerment. The study tests the applicability to Native American jurisdictions of the experiences of fifteen case study jurisdictions presently associated with the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France in shared sovereign relationships. The focus is on the evolution of those relationships and opportunities for development where jurisdictions do not attain full control over their affairs. The case studies examine the relationships from the perspectives of political, economic, and cultural sovereignty. The article further examines the relationships in …

Four Futures Of Chevron Deference, Daniel E. Walters

Faculty Scholarship

In two upcoming cases, the Supreme Court will consider whether to overturn the Chevron doctrine, which, since 1984, has required courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of otherwise ambiguous statutes. In this short essay, I defend the proposition that, even on death’s door, Chevron deference is likely to be resurrected, and I offer a simple positive political theory model that helps explain why. The core insight of this model is that the prevailing approach to judicial review of agency interpretations of law is politically contingent—that is, it is likely to represent an equilibrium that efficiently maximizes the Supreme Court’s …