Law Commons^™

Defending The Environment: A Mission For The World's Militaries, Mark P. Nevitt

Mark P Nevitt

Critics often fault the U.S. military for its environmental stewardship, and legal scholarship frequently highlights efforts by the military to seek national security exemptions from various environmental laws and the military’s poor cleanup record. Yet the Department of Defense (“DoD”) is largely subject to and complies with the full array of American environmental laws in the same manner and extent as any agency of the federal government. While the military’s environmental record is far from perfect, a comparative legal survey shows that the U.S. is at the relative forefront of effectively balancing environmental stewardship with national security.

This article surveys …

Will More, Better, Cheaper, And Faster Monitoring Improve Environmental Management?, Ryan P. Kelly

Ryan P Kelly

Two critical problems in environmental management are a lack of primary data and the difficulty of assessing the environmental impacts of human activities. Producing the information necessary to address these twin challenges is often difficult and expensive, which impedes decisionmaking in environmental management. I focus here on the possibility of making data collection more powerful and more cost-effective with a suite of analyses made tractable by emerging technology for genetic analysis. More, better, cheaper, and faster information about the planet’s living resources promises to influence a wide range of legal and policy processes—from Clean Water Act compliance and related public …