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Shared Sovereignty: The Role Of Expert Agencies In Environmental Law, Michael Blumm, Andrea Lang

Michael Blumm

Environmental law usually features statutory interpretation or administrative interpretation by a single agency. Less frequent is a close look at the mechanics of implementing environmental policy across agency lines. In this article, we offer such a look: a comparative analysis of five statutes and their approaches to sharing decision-making authority among more than one federal agency. We call this pluralistic approach to administrative decisionmaking “shared sovereignty.”

In this analysis, we compare implementation of the National Environmental Policy, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Federal Power Act. All of these statutes incorporate …

Preventing Cold War: Militarization In The Southernmost Continent And The Antarctic Treaty System's Fading Effectiveness, Dillon A. Redding

Dillon A Redding

This note argues that the preservation of Antarctica for peaceful research and internationally cooperative activity as envisioned originally by the Antarctic Treaty in 1961 has gone unrealized amid growing international interest in the strategic advantages offered by Antarctica, including the possibility of large swathes of mineral deposits and optimal locations for satellite stations. Part 1 describes the motivations behind the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) and outlines the relevant provisions of the Antarctic Treaty. Part 2 examines the military advantages to a state presence in Antarctica and the ways in which the ATS allows for such a presence to be carried …

Corruption, Constitutions And Crude In Latin America, Fredrick V. Perry, Scheherazade S. Rehman

Fredrick V. Perry

This paper examines the perception of corruption that exists throughout Latin America, and analyses the importance of the institutional environment in Latin American countries, which are both richly endowed with and dependent on oil and natural gas. First, we look at corruption generally in the region and then carry our analysis by looking at various countries’ GDP per capita versus several indices measuring different dimensions of countries’ economic development, political progress, and social performance. We also combine corruption indices and separate them by typology of corruption in order to investigate the particular facets of corruption that pose the greatest impediment …

Science And Compliance In The Arctic: A Constructivist Approach To The Un Commission On The Limits Of The Continental Shelf, Sari M. Graben, Peter Harrison

Sari M Graben

The United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf is expected to play an essential role in delineating the rights of the Arctic states to sea bed resources in the Arctic Ocean. Positivist theories of international law generally source Arctic state compliance to the binding effect of Article 76 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. However, positivist explanations fail to answer why the Arctic states, which are authorized to establish their own limits, would accept the sovereignty costs associated with the Commission’s legal and scientific interpretations. In order to better understand how the Commission …

Regulating For The Public Health: Perchlorate Regulation Under The Safe Drinking Water Act Exceeds Statutory Authority, Mary Jones

Mary Jones

This paper recommends rethinking the statutory framework of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to provide a more robust rubric, to include a scientific and objective focus, for proper regulation. The SDWA is evaluated through the lens of upcoming perchlorate regulation due in February 2013.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates acceptable contaminant levels and decontamination processes for all public water systems, pursuant to statutory authority granted by the SDWA. Where the policy at work is admirable, the execution falls short.

Perchlorate occurs naturally, but also as a by-product to rocket fuel, firework, and other explosive constructions. Scientific …

The Management Of Public Natural Resource Wealth, Paul Rose

Paul Rose

As improved but often more environmentally-obtrusive technologies such as hydraulic fracturing facilitate the extraction of billions of dollars in natural resource wealth, more states are now faced with a welcome but exceedingly complex set of problems: Who should benefit from natural resources extracted from public lands? If the state retains much of this wealth in the form of tax receipts, how should these funds be spent? What do states owe to the communities from which these resources were extracted? What do states owe to future generations? While these are questions of first impression for a few, fortunate states, a number …

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