Law Commons^™

Copyright In An Era Of Information Overload: Toward The Privileging Of Categorizers, Frank Pasquale

Vanderbilt Law Review

What to read? or watch? or listen to? These are hard questions, not because of any scarcity of expression, but rather because of its abundance. Over 100,000 books are published in the United States each year, thousands of movies and CDs are released, and the amount of textual, musical, and visual works on the internet continues to rise exponentially. Whose work can we trust? And who knows what of it will rank among the best that has been thought and said-or even provide a few moments levity?

Admittedly, a bulging bookshelf or surfeit of films prompts an existential crisis in …

The Carbon-Neutral Individual, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Anne C. Steinemann

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Reducing the risk of catastrophic climate change will require leveling off greenhouse gas emissions over the short term and reducing emissions by an estimated 60-80% over the long term. To achieve these reductions, we argue that policymakers and regulators should focus not only on factories and other industrial sources of emissions but also on individuals. We construct a model that demonstrates that individuals contribute roughly one-third of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. This one-third share accounts for roughly 8% of the world's total, more than the total emissions of any other country except China, and more than several …

The Equator Principles: The Private Financial Sector's Attempt At Environmental Responsibility, Andrew Hardenbrook

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The Equator Principles are a set of voluntary environmental guidelines created to manage environmental degradation that results from large-scale developmental projects in the Third World. On June 4, 2003, ten private financial institutions adopted these guidelines, and by the end of 2006 this number had grown to forty. Moreover, in June 2006 the Principles were revised, raising the level of scrutiny for companies that adhere to these guidelines.

At first blush, the adoption of the Equator Principles by private financial institutions appears to be a substantial step toward implementing environmental standards in developing countries that lack adequate regulations. However, three …

The New Wal-Mart Effect: The Role Of Private Contracting In Global Governance, Michael P. Vandenbergh

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reconstructing The Wall Of Virtue: Maxims For The Co-Evolution Of Environmental Law And Environmental Science, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Much has been written lately in legal scholarship about the role of science in policy and the role of policy in science - and perhaps in no field of law has more been said about them than environmental law. Yet asking the question, "What is the proper role of science in environmental policy?" is utterly misguided, in that it suggests that science operates on the other side of a Wall of Virtue from policy. In The Honest Broker, Roger Pielke, Jr. refers to this as the "linear model" of science in society, "whereby knowledge is created in the lab, packaged …

The Pardy-Ruhl Dialogue On Ecosystem Management, Part Iv: Narrowing And Sharpening The Questions, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article, fourth in a five-part dialogue appearing in the Pace ELR, further responds to Professor Bruce Pardy's critique of ecosystem management. I defend ecosystem management, arguing it does not involve the standardless, unbridled administrative discretion Pardy suggests.

The Law And Policy Beginnings Of Ecosystem Services, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Over the past decade, there has been an explosion of interest in ecosystem services from scientists, economists, government officials, entrepreneurs, and the media. This article traces the development of the ecosystem services concept in law and policy. We prepared it in connection with a symposium held at Florida State University in April 2006. The presentations at the symposium, which then developed into the articles in a special issue of the Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law (volume 22, issue 2), approached the topic of ecosystem services and the law from two perspectives. One set of presentations focused on the …