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Full-Text Articles in Law
What The Frack? How Weak Industrial Disclosure Rules Prevent Public Understanding Of Chemical Practices And Toxic Politics, Benjamin W. Cramer
What The Frack? How Weak Industrial Disclosure Rules Prevent Public Understanding Of Chemical Practices And Toxic Politics, Benjamin W. Cramer
Benjamin W. Cramer
Hydraulic fracturing, known colloquially as “fracking,” makes use of chemically-formulated fluid that is forced down a gas well at great pressure to fracture underground rock formations and release embedded natural gas. Many journalists, environmentalists, and public health advocates are concerned about what may happen if the fracking fluid escapes the well and contaminates nearby drinking water supplies. This article attempts a comprehensive analysis and comparison of all relevant fracking fluid disclosure regulations currently extant in the United States, and considers whether the information gained is truly useful for citizens, journalists, and regulators. In recent years the federal government and several …
Environmental Federalism's Tug Of War Within, Erin Ryan
Environmental Federalism's Tug Of War Within, Erin Ryan
Erin Ryan
Anyone paying attention has noticed that many of the most controversial issues in American governance—health care reform, marriage rights, immigration, drug law, and others—involve questions of federalism. The intensity of these disputes reflects inexorable pressure on all levels of government to meet the increasingly complicated challenges of governance in an ever more interconnected world, where the answers to jurisdictional questions are less and less obvious. Yet even as federalism dilemmas continue to erupt all from all corners, environmental law remains at the forefront of controversy, and it is likely to do so for some time. From mining to nuclear waste …
The Spending Power And Environmental Law After Sebelius, Erin Ryan
The Spending Power And Environmental Law After Sebelius, Erin Ryan
Erin Ryan
This article analyzes the Supreme Court’s new spending power doctrine and its impact on state-federal bargaining in programs of cooperative federalism, using the laboratory of environmental law. (It expands on the legal analysis in an Issue Brief originally published by the American Constitution Society on Oct. 1, 2013.) After the Supreme Court ruled in the highly charged Affordable Care Act case of 2012, National Federation of Independent Business vs. Sebelius, the political arena erupted in debate over the implications for the health reform initiative and, more generally, the reach of federal law. Analysts fixated on the decision’s dueling Commerce Clause …
Shifting Sands: A Meta-Theory For Public Access And Private Property Along The Coast, Melissa K. Scanlan
Shifting Sands: A Meta-Theory For Public Access And Private Property Along The Coast, Melissa K. Scanlan
Melissa K. Scanlan
Over half the United States population currently lives near a coast. As shorelines are used by more people, developed by private owners, and altered by extreme weather, competition over access to water and beaches will intensify, as will the need for a clearer legal theory capable of accommodating competing private and public interests. One such public interest is to walk along the beach, which seems simple enough. However, beach walking often occurs on this ambulatory shoreline where public rights grounded in the public trust doctrine and private rights grounded in property ownership intersect. To varying degrees, each state has a …
Adverse Possession, Private-Zoning Waiver & Desuetude: Abandonment & Recapture Of Property And Liberty Interests, Scott A. Shepard
Adverse Possession, Private-Zoning Waiver & Desuetude: Abandonment & Recapture Of Property And Liberty Interests, Scott A. Shepard
Scott A. Shepard
Adverse-possession doctrine labors under a pair of disabilities: a hesitancy by theorists to embrace the abandonment-and-recapture principle that informs the doctrine, and a substantial unwillingness of governments to abandon an antiquated and outmoded maxim shielding them from the doctrine’s important work. Removing these disabilities will allow a series of positive outcomes. First, it will demonstrate that all would-be adverse possessors, not just those acting “in good faith” or with possessory intent, should enjoy the fruits of the doctrine. Second, it will provide valuable additional means by which the public may monitor the performance of government employees, and additional discipline to …
Federalism At The Cathedral: Property Rules, Liability Rules, And Inalienability Rules In Tenth Amendment Infrastructure, Erin Ryan
Erin Ryan
As climate change, war in the Middle East, and the price of oil focus American determination to move beyond fossil fuels, nuclear power has resurfaced as a possible alternative. But energy reform efforts may be stalled by an unlikely policy deadlock stemming from a structural technicality in an aging Supreme Court decision: New York v. United States, which set forth the Tenth Amendment anti-commandeering rule and ushered in the New Federalism era in 1992. This dry technicality also poses ongoing regulatory obstacles in such critical interjurisdictional contexts as stormwater management, climate regulation, and disaster response. Such is the enormous power …
Federalism And The Tug Of War Within: Seeking Checks And Balance In The Interjurisdictional Gray Area, Erin Ryan
Erin Ryan
Federalism and the Tug of War Within explores tensions that arise among the underlying values of federalism when state or federal actors regulate within the “interjurisdictional gray area” that implicates both local and national concerns. Drawing examples from the failed response to Hurricane Katrina and other interjurisdictional problems to illustrate this conflict, the Article demonstrates how the trajectory set by the New Federalism’s “strict-separationist” model of dual sovereignty inhibits effective governance in these contexts. In addition to the anti-tyranny, pro-accountability, and localism-protective values of federalism, the Article identifies a problem-solving value inherent in the capacity requirement of American federalism’s subsidiarity …
Public Trust & Distrust: Theoretical Implications Of The Public Trust Doctrine For Natural Resource Management, Erin Ryan
Erin Ryan
This essay reviews the theoretical underpinnings of the public trust doctrine, received at common law and constitutionalized in many states, and explores its contentious reception by green legal theorists. Since Professor Joseph Sax's revival of the ancient common law doctrine as a vehicle for environmental advocacy in the early 1970s, it has been hailed by many environmentalists as the most powerful tool available for protecting natural resource commons. At the same time, however, it has been attacked by others who argue that use of the property rights-based doctrine reifies an ownership approach to natural resources and obstructs the development of …