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Full-Text Articles in Law
Is A Substantive, Non-Positivist United States Environmental Law Possible?, Dan Tarlock
Is A Substantive, Non-Positivist United States Environmental Law Possible?, Dan Tarlock
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
U.S. environmental law is almost exclusively positive and procedural. The foundation is the pollution control and biodiversity conservation statutes enacted primarily between 1969–1980 and judicial decisions interpreting them. This law has created detailed processes for making decisions but has produced few substantive constraints on private and public decisions which impair the environment. Several substantive candidates have been proposed, such as the common law, a constitutional right to a healthy environment, the public trust, and the extension of rights to fauna and flora. However, these candidates have not produced the hoped for substantive law. Many argue that a substantive U.S. environmental …
The Quest For A Sustainable Future And The Dawn Of A New Journal At Michigan Law, David M. Uhlmann
The Quest For A Sustainable Future And The Dawn Of A New Journal At Michigan Law, David M. Uhlmann
Articles
When I joined the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School in 2007, the first assignment I gave students in my Environmental Law and Policy class was John McPhee's Encounters with the Archdruid. It must have seemed like a curious choice to them, particularly coming from a professor who just three months earlier had been the Chief of the Environmental Crimes Section at the U.S. Department of Justice. The book was not a dramatic tale of courtroom battles. In fact, the book was not even about the law, and the clash of environmental values it depicted pre-dated the environmental …
A Functional Approach To Risks And Uncertainties Under Nepa , Todd S. Aagaard
A Functional Approach To Risks And Uncertainties Under Nepa , Todd S. Aagaard
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) mandates that federal agencies evaluate the environmental impacts of their proposed actions. This requires agencies to make ex ante predictions about environmental consequences that often involve a significant degree of factual risk or uncertainty. Considerable controversy exists regarding how agencies should address such risks and uncertainties. Current NEPA law adopts a largely ad hoc approach that lacks coherence and analytical rigor. Some environmentalists and legal scholars have called for a greater emphasis on worst-case analysis in environmental planning, especially after the recent Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the meltdowns …