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Full-Text Articles in Law
Ohio House Bill 869 And Similar Statutes: An Analysis Of Mandatory Deposits On Beverage Containers To Promote Recycling In Relation To Environmental Control, Gary R. Myers
Akron Law Review
Proposed House Bill 8691 requires that all soft drink and beer containers carry a mandatory five-cent deposit in order to promote their recycling. This would necessarily cause a reduction in the litter discarded along Ohio's highways, parks, beaches, etc. To Ohio environmentalists, the Bill represents a major legislative response to the growing litter and solid waste problem. However, to industry it represents a major curtailment of their production growth and profits, specifically those industries whose production is concentrated solely or substantially in the area of non-returnable cans and bottles. If the Bill becomes effective it will be a major victory …
Four Years Of Environmental Impact Statements: A Review Of Agency Administration Of Nepa, Mary Anne Sullivan
Four Years Of Environmental Impact Statements: A Review Of Agency Administration Of Nepa, Mary Anne Sullivan
Akron Law Review
This article will focus on the environmental impact statement process of NEPA functions. It will analyze some of the structural weaknesses of the process, some of the interests private parties are using it to protect and, finally, whether or not it is bringing us closer to a realization of the lofty goals the Act sets forth in Section 4331.
The Increasing Privatization Of Environmental Permitting, Jessica Owley
The Increasing Privatization Of Environmental Permitting, Jessica Owley
Akron Law Review
This article examines the increasing privatization of environmental law by taking a close look at mitigation measures in permitting programs. As mitigation has become an increasingly important element of permitting programs, permitting agencies have looked for outside organizations to help design, monitor, and enforce the mitigation projects. Thus, compensatory mitigation projects provide a good lens for examining the role of private organizations in environmental law. There are good reasons for drawing on the power of private organizations. They can provide flexibility and expertise as well as increased capacity. However, concerns regarding democracy and accountability arise when government agencies hand off …
Toward Regional Governance In Environmental Law, Douglas R. Williams
Toward Regional Governance In Environmental Law, Douglas R. Williams
Akron Law Review
This article will proceed in three parts. Part I provides a brief introduction to the structured institutional arrangements under the CAA and the CWA. I discuss how these programs have evolved in ways that depart from what may have been originally anticipated and how their structure poses impediments to effective environmental management. Part II provides a short summary of current thinking about the institutional architecture of our environmental programs, focusing primarily on the “environmental federalism” scholarship of recent years. I offer reasons for abandoning federalism as an appropriate institutional framework. Part III presents a conceptual, rather than tightly engineered, argument …
Looking Back To The Future: The Curmudgeon's Guide To The Future Of Environmental Law, Denis Binder
Looking Back To The Future: The Curmudgeon's Guide To The Future Of Environmental Law, Denis Binder
Akron Law Review
This essay is not intended as a traditional law review article, but as an essay intended to raise questions about the current status and future of Environmental Law in light of the three and one-half centuries of a developmental, exploitative ethos in America.
Power To The People: Restoring The Public Voice In Environmental Law, Albert C. Lin
Power To The People: Restoring The Public Voice In Environmental Law, Albert C. Lin
Akron Law Review
Although the last forty years of environmental law have witnessed some successes, they have also increasingly revealed the limitations of existing laws and regulatory structures. Congress has been unable to pass substantial environmental legislation in recent years, notwithstanding widespread recognition of the need for better tools for responding to climate change, toxic chemicals, non-point source water pollution, and other problems. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) has struggled in the wake of limited resources and politicization to effectively use the tools it has, and its rulemaking processes are often dominated by industry and other repeat players. To deal with …
Aligning Regulation With The Informational Need: Ecosystem Services And The Next Generation Of Environmental Law, Keith H. Hirokawa, Elizabeth J. Porter
Aligning Regulation With The Informational Need: Ecosystem Services And The Next Generation Of Environmental Law, Keith H. Hirokawa, Elizabeth J. Porter
Akron Law Review
This article explores the Clinch Coalition decision to understand why the court would perpetuate a process that systematically rejects the relevance and value of ecosystem processes in the information gathering exercise entailed in these environmental regulations. The discussion begins with an introduction to ecosystem services as a study of human dependency on the services provided by functioning ecosystems. In the second section, the article turns to the Clinch Coalition decision to outline the arguments relied upon by the court to legitimize the Forest Service’s decision to avoid an ecosystem services analysis. The article then presents the Clinch Coalition decision as …
Adaptive Management And The Future Of Environmental Law, Eric Biber
Adaptive Management And The Future Of Environmental Law, Eric Biber
Akron Law Review
Adaptive management is the new paradigm in environmental law. It is omnipresent in scholarship and management documents and is even starting to appear in court opinions. There have been many calls for environmental law to adapt itself to adaptive management by becoming more flexible and dynamic. But does adaptive management really warrant a revolution in environmental law? Or is it adaptive management that might need to adapt to the world of environmental law? There has been an abundance of scholarship on the strengths of adaptive management, making the case for changing environmental law to embrace adaptive management. But answering the …
Environmental Law And The Collapse Of New Deal Constitutionalism, Arthur F. Mcevoy
Environmental Law And The Collapse Of New Deal Constitutionalism, Arthur F. Mcevoy
Akron Law Review
This Article, which is a précis for a book in progress about the history of late twentieth-century U.S. environmental law, argues that our modern environmental law is peculiarly a creature of the New Deal. Despite its obvious legacy from common-law nuisance and Progressive regulation, what makes modern environmental law different from anything that came before is the way in which reformers built it out of parts copied from New Deal reform projects: cooperative federalism, the tax-and-spend power, representation-reinforcing, rights trumps, and so on. Environmental law’s history, its character, its accomplishments, and its shortcomings thus entwined with those of the New …
Replacing Sustainability, Robin Kundis Craig, Melinda Harm Benson
Replacing Sustainability, Robin Kundis Craig, Melinda Harm Benson
Akron Law Review
This Article argues that, from a policy perspective, we must face the impossibility of even defining—let alone pursuing—a goal of “sustainability” in a world characterized by such extreme complexity, radical uncertainty, and discomfiting loss of stationarity. Instead, we need new policy directions and orientations that provide the necessary capacity to deal with these “wicked problems” in a meaningful and equitable way. The realities of current and emerging SES dynamics warrant a new set of tools and approaches to governance of those systems. Part II of this Article provides a brief history of sustainability and sustainable development, including corollary emphases on …
Symposium: The Next Generation Of Environmental And Natural Resources Law: What Has Changed In Forty Years And What Needs To Change As A Result, Kalyani Robbins
Symposium: The Next Generation Of Environmental And Natural Resources Law: What Has Changed In Forty Years And What Needs To Change As A Result, Kalyani Robbins
Akron Law Review
Introduction to nine perspectives changing in the field of Environmental and Natural Resources Law. These discussions, and our shared concern for the issues that will impact the planet for centuries to come, are so valuable.
The Laws Of Nature: Reflections On The Evolution Of Ecosystem Management Law And Policy, Kalyani Robbins
The Laws Of Nature: Reflections On The Evolution Of Ecosystem Management Law And Policy, Kalyani Robbins
University of Akron Press Publications
This timely collection written by an interdisciplinary array of law professors, who specialize in legal and policy issues surrounding ecosystem management, and scholars and practitioners in areas such as environmental policy and planning, conservation, economics, and biology explore why ecosystems must be valued and managed in their own right. The importance of ecosystems has been underestimated. We cannot simply hope ecosystems will benefit from legislation focused on other environmental and natural resource protections, such as those for wildlife, trees, air and water. An ecosystem, a community of organisms together with their physical environment, viewed as a system of interacting and …
An Ecosystem Management Primer: History, Perceptions, And Modern Definition, Kalyani Robbins
An Ecosystem Management Primer: History, Perceptions, And Modern Definition, Kalyani Robbins
Akron Law Faculty Publications
This chapter will first take the reader on a journey through the history of ecosystem management, providing a summary of how it has grown and developed over the past two decades. This will only naturally lead to the next part of the chapter, which focuses on the present understanding of how ecosystem management is to be defined and applied, as well as the variety in perceptions of this modern understanding. Finally, it will serve as an introduction to the remainder of the book, previewing the various contributions collected here, offered by some of the best-known scholars in the field of …