Law Commons^™

Opposition To Renewable Energy Facilities In The United States: June 2024 Edition, Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Harmukh Singh, Noah Schaffir

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Achieving lower carbon emissions in the United States will require developing a massive number renewable energy facilities at an unprecedented scale and pace. Although many renewable energy facilities are sited without any problem, local opposition often arises. This report updates and considerably expands three previous Sabin Center reports, published in September 2021, March 2022, and May 2023, which document local and state restrictions against, and opposition to, siting renewable energy projects, as well as energy storage and transmission projects that are closely tied to renewable energy generation. The time period covered by this report ranges from as early as 1995 …

Free, Prior And Informed Consent: Addressing Political Realities To Improve Impact, Tehtena Mebratu-Tsegaye, Leila Kazemi

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Indigenous and Tribal peoples’ right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) has transformative potential. Yet, there is a considerable gap between the theory and what happens in practice. Global actors supporting recognition of FPIC and effective prior consultation processes usually focus on normative standards and best practices. They concentrate much less on addressing the political challenges and opportunities that shape how these processes unfold.

With funding from the Ford Foundation, we looked at the politics of FPIC in Latin America, analyzing how the power and interests of the key players–across governments, companies and indigenous peoples–can determine the fate of …

Equipping The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation For The Low-Carbon Transition: How Are Other National Oil Companies Adapting?, Perrine Toledano, Martin Dietrich Brauch, Tehtena Mebratu-Tsegaye, Francisco Javier Pardinas Favela

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s (NNPC) persistent governance challenges have both hampered Nigeria’s oil sector development and deprived the country of public resources. The oil, climate, and COVID-19 crises and the ramp-up of the low-carbon transition exacerbate this reality, with the national oil company (NOC) delivering sub-optimal returns to its stakeholders.

Other NOCs have taken meaningful steps to become players in the low-carbon energy transition domestically or in­ternationally – for example, Sau­di Arabia’s Saudi Aramco, Norway’s Equinor, Brazil’s Petrobras, Malaysia’s Petronas, and Algeria’s Sonatrach. These NOCs can serve as sources of inspiration for NNPC. These five NOCs have also undergone …

A Review Of Sierra Leone’S Mines And Minerals Act, Tehtena Mebratu-Tsegaye, Perrine Toledano, Sophie Thomashausen

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

With the support of Oxfam, the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment reviewed select provisions in the Mines and Minerals Act 2009 and corresponding policy statements from the Minerals Policy 2018 to provide recommendations for how to best align the anticipated new mining law with international best practice. The 2009 law was reviewed with a focus on the following topics:

• Fiscal regime;
• Climate change;
• Access to and use of land;
• Community consultations and participation;
• Human rights; and
• Community development agreements.

The policy brief aims to support the Government of Sierra Leone in the ongoing law reform process.

Town Of Telluride V. San Miguel Valley Corp.: Extraterritoriality And Local Autonomy, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

At first blush, the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court in Town of Telluride v. San Miguel Valley Corp. seems like an extraordinary endorsement of home rule and a significant milestone in the evolution of local power. The Colorado Supreme Court adopted a very broad construction of the power of a home rule municipality under the state constitution and invalidated a state statute that expressly sought to limit that power. The power in question – extraterritorial eminent domain – seems to go well beyond even the most generous assumptions about local government authority. As the uproar following the United …

Six Myths About Kelo: Kelo V. City Of New London, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Kelo v. City of New London, 125 S. Ct. 2655 (2005), is unique in the modem annals of law in terms of the negative response it has evoked. The initial reaction by lawyers familiar with the case was one of lack of surprise. Within days, however, Internet bloggers, television commentators, and neighbors talking over backyard fences decided that Keio was an outrage. Even Justice Stevens sought to distance himself from his own majority opinion, declaring in a speech to a bar association that he thought the outcome was "unwise," and that he would not have supported it if he were …

The American Transformation Of Waste Doctrine: A Pluralist Interpretation, Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

This Article draws on an episode of nineteenth-century American doctrinal history to develop a pluralist approach to explaining changes in property law. It addresses the question: What causes ac­count for the development of property regimes across time? The courts' answer emerges from examination of nineteenth-century American reform of the law of waste, which governs the changes te­nants may make in the estates they occupy. A line of state supreme court cases, beginning in 1810, transformed the doctrine from the strict rule of English common law to a flexible standard. Economic analysis helps to explain the change; the full story, however, …

Home Rule For The Twenty-First Century, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

At this point, four years into the new century, most readers must be tired of the invocation of the "twenty-first century" in law review articles. Yet, "the twenty-first century" in the title of this article is significant. The home rule idea first entered American law in the nineteenth century, an era with different forms of urban political, social, and economic organization, and a different role for local government. As the nature of urban development and the role of local government changes, home rule must change with it.

Home rule is a complex topic. Home rule takes many legal forms and …

Private Lawyers And Environmental Justice, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

A private lawyer representing a private client is seldom a crusader. When environmental justice is relevant to a particular matter – the client proposes to build a facility and engages the lawyer to help secure necessary governmental approvals, for example-the lawyer's primary duty must be to the client.

The client in such a case faces two primary types of questions: substantive, such as where and how to build the facility; and procedural, deciding what processes to follow and how much to involve the community in the planning. Typically, by the time the lawyer is brought in, the client already has …

Time, Property Rights, And The Common Law, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

The fee simple is often defined as an estate or interest of "potentially infinite duration." This way of speaking suggests that property rights are fixed and permanent – indeed, that they last forever. Similarly, property rights are regarded in classical liberal thought as sources of stability and security that foster individual autonomy and protect owners against the vicissitudes of life. This too suggests that property rights are not contingent upon a particular temporal context, but rather are impervious to the passage of time.

When we look at the common law, however, we quickly discover a much more complex relationship between …