Law Commons^™

Mineral Taxation In Zambia, Muna Ndulo

Muna B Ndulo

No abstract provided.

Symposium The International Legal Regime For Antarctica: Introduction, John J. Barceló Iii

John J. Barceló III

No abstract provided.

Product Standards To Protect The Local Environment--The Gatt And The Uruguay Round Sanitary And Phytosanitary Agreement, John J. Barceló Iii

John J. Barceló III

No abstract provided.

Federalism And The Rise Of Renewable Energy: Preserving State And Local Voices In The Green Energy Revolution, Daniel Lyons

Daniel Lyons

The rise of renewable energy has disrupted the traditional regulatory structure governing electricity. Unlike traditional fossil fuel power plants, wind and solar facilities are geographically constrained: they exist where the wind blows and the sun shines. Large-scale renewable energy is more likely to flow interstate, from resource-rich prairie and Southwestern states to energy-hungry population centers elsewhere. The difficulties of coordinating interstate electricity policies have led some to call for greater preemption of the states’ traditional duties as chief regulators of the electricity industry. But while preemption would eliminate some state-level roadblocks to interstate cooperation, it would sacrifice many of the …

Protecting A Natural Resource Legacy While Promoting Reslience: Can It Be Done?, Alyson C. Flournoy

Alyson Flournoy

Our stock of natural resources, and the values and services they provide, are diminishing steadily over time. We have dozens of laws, enacted over a period of almost forty years that express the objective of stemming this tide. Yet, the inexorable, incremental loss continues. Scholars concerned with conservation of our natural capital have long wrestled with how best to improve the laws we have in place and to supplement the framework of existing law with newer approaches. One common theme in efforts to design progressive conservation law is how to better incorporate scientific insights into our legal regimes. This effort …

Compartmentalized Thinking And The Clean Water Act, Christine A. Klein

Christine A. Klein

Modern water pollution control traces back to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972 (Clean Water Act or CWA). Like other statutes of its period, the CWA addresses pollution of a single medium, water. Despite its goal of achieving aquatic integrity, the CWA succumbs to what this article refers to as “compartmentalized thinking.” That is, in drafting the CWA, Congress created a series of regulatory boxes that separate water into constituent parts recognized by law, but not by nature. Undertaking a deeper examination of the fragmentation instinct, this article turns to political theory and cognitive psychology for explanations. In …

Acts Of God Or Toxic Torts? Applying Tort Principles To The Problem Of Climate Change, Eduardo M. Peñalver

Eduardo M. Peñalver

The problem of climate change continues to be an intractable one for policymakers. Uncertainties over the likely costs of climate change as well as over the costs of proposed remedies have hampered the formation of a consensus regarding the best course of action. The principles of tort law provide a useful means of analyzing the problem of climate change, particularly the issue of who should bear the costs associated with its effects. The two major goals of tort law (reducing the costs of accidents and corrective justice) both point towards the appropriateness of placing the costs of climate change on …

Incorporating The Third Party Beneficiary Principle In Natural Resource Contracts, James T. Gathii

James Thuo Gathii

Third world citizens—parties who often have the most to lose in natural resource contracts between their governments and foreign investors—often have no voice in negotiations of the contracts and consequently have no remedy under contract law when harms occur or when the contracts are not properly enforced. The privity doctrine, which permits contract suits only by parties to the contract, bars these citizens from suing because they were not in privity with any of the contracting parties, despite that these contracts are generally made for the benefit of these citizens. However, some countries have adopted—and this Essay argues other countries …

Management Regimes And Its Impact On The Wetland Fisheries Management In Assam, Ganesh Chandra

Ganesh Chandra

Assam is endowed with copious aquatic wealth in the form of beels, swamps, ponds and rivers. The floodplain wetlands (beels) extending over one lakh hectare, constitute the most important fishery resource of the state. The beels are considered as one of the most productive ecosystems owing to their characteristic interactions between land and water system. These wetlands are the common property resource and under different management regimes. These wetlands are under various management regimes, i.e., private management (individuals and groups), fishermen cooperative management, Community-based fisheries management (decentralized management, Government works as facilitator) and open access. Most of the unregistered beels …

Avoiding The Road To Ferc-Dom: The Supreme Court Affirms The Right To Contract In Morgan Stanley V. Snohomish, Jorge A. Mestre

Jorge A Mestre

No abstract provided.

Renewable Energy: Where We Are Now And How Renewable Energy Investment And Development Can Be Expanded, Kevin M. Walsh

Kevin M Walsh

The renewable energy field is currently stifled because many renewable energy developments require tax equity investors to provide additional funds to get the project off the ground and running. The Code provides tax credits to incentivize investors to invest. Currently, the Investment Tax Credit (“ITC”) is the only available credit left for renewable projects placed in service from 2014 on. Tax credits are a step in the right direction to encourage renewable investment; however, the credits are limited in application mostly to large financial institutions. Moreover, investments into one specific renewable energy project can be risky because there is no …

The Durability Of Private Claims To Public Property, Bruce R. Huber

Bruce R Huber

Property rights and resource use are closely related. Scholarly inquiry about their relation, however, tends to emphasize private property arrangements while ignoring public property — property formally owned by government. The well-known tragedies of the commons and anticommons, for example, are generally analyzed with reference to the optimal form and degree of private ownership. But what about property owned by the state? The federal government alone owns nearly one-third of the land area of the United States. One could well ask: is there a tragedy associated with public property, too? If there is, here is what it might look like: …

Anti-Waste, Michael Pappas

Michael Pappas

It may be a bad idea to waste resources, but is it illegal? Legally speaking, what does “waste” even mean? Though the concept may appear completely subjective, this Article builds a framework for understanding how the law identifies and addresses waste. Drawing upon property and natural resource doctrines, the Article finds that the law selects from a menu of five specific, and sometimes competing, societal values to define waste. The values are: 1) economic efficiency, 2) human flourishing, 3) concern for future generations, 4) stability and consistency, and 5) ecological concerns. The law recognizes waste in terms of one or …

Third Party Access To Infrastructure In The United Kingdom Continental Shelf: An Unhappy Mix Of Heavy-Handed Regulation And Light-Handed Regulation, Yanal Abul Failat

Yanal Abul Failat

“An unhappy mix of poorly-drafted legislation; Statutory Guidance relative to the Ministerial power which is unfit for purpose; and a well-meaning but essentially useless industry code of best practice.”(Gordon 2012) The objective of this paper is to provide a synopsis on both hard law and soft law instruments addressing third-party access (“TPA”) to infrastructure in the UKCS. Firstly, the paper will outline the scope and purpose of TPA; followed by an outline and evaluation of the regulatory regime under the recently enacted Energy Act 2011 (“Act”) and the Infrastructure Code of Practice (“ICOP”). Finally, it will provide a conclusion on …

Ferc's Order No. 1000 From A Historical Perspective: Restructuring And Reorganization Of Electric Transmission Markets From 1996 Until Present, Nicolas A. Mctyre

Nicolas A. McTyre

No abstract provided.

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 …

Interactions Between Public And Private Resource Governance: Key Insights From The Fisheries Case, Zdravka Tzankova

Zdravka Tzankova

Growing in presence and visibility, eco-labels and other forms of green certification are the more obvious signs of a broader social and policy phenomenon: the rise of private regulation and nonstate, market-based governance of environmental and resource practices. The growth of private regulatory initiatives, especially initiatives led by NGOs and other civil society actors, is increasingly accompanied by concerns over their potential to detract from public, government regulation.

This paper seeks to generate insights on the nature and consequences of interaction between more traditional forms of public, government regulation and the growing realm of market-based regulation by nonstate actors. It …

The Next Great Compromise: A Comprehensive Response To Opposition Against Shale Gas Development Using Hydraulic Fracturing In The United States, Monika Ehrman

Monika U. Ehrman

Lights Out In The Bakken: An Analysis Of Flaring Regulation And Its Potential Effect On North Dakota Shale Oil Production

Monika U. Ehrman

Public Lands And The Federal Government’S Compact-Based “Duty To Dispose”: A Case Study Of Utah’S H.B. 148 – The Transfer Of Public Lands Act, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Recent legislation passed in March 2012 in the State of Utah — the “Transfer of Public Lands Act and Related Study,” (“TPLA”) also commonly referred to as House Bill 148 (“H.B. 148”) — has demanded that the federal government, by December 31, 2014, “extinguish title” to certain public lands that the federal government currently holds (totaling an estimated more than 20 million acres). It also calls for the transfer of such acreage to the State and establishes procedures for the development of a management regime for this increased state portfolio of land holdings resulting from the transfer. The State of …