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Full-Text Articles in Law
A Brook With Legal Rights: The Rights Of Nature In Court, Hope M. Babcock
A Brook With Legal Rights: The Rights Of Nature In Court, Hope M. Babcock
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Over two decades ago, Professor Christopher Stone asked what turned out to be a question of enduring interest: should trees have standing? His question was recently answered in the affirmative by a creek in Pennsylvania, which successfully intervened in a lawsuit between an energy company and a local township to prevent the lifting of a ban against drilling oil and gas wastewater wells. Using that intervention, this Article examines whether such an initiative might succeed on a broader scale. The Article parses the structure, language, and punctuation of Article III, as well as various theories of nonhuman personhood to see …
Climate Exactions, J. Peter Byrne, Kathryn A. Zyla
Climate Exactions, J. Peter Byrne, Kathryn A. Zyla
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This essay presents a legal device by which local governments can put a price on climate emissions and loss of resiliency generated by new real estate development. Local governments commonly impose fees, a type of monetary exaction, on new development to offset public costs that such development will impose. This Essay argues that monetary fees offer significant potential as a tool to help local governments manage land development’s contribution to climate change. Such “climate exactions” can put a price on the carbon emissions from new development and also on development that reduces the natural resiliency of the jurisdiction to the …