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Full-Text Articles in Law
Look To Windward: The Michigan Environmental Protection Act And The Case For Atmospheric Trust Litigation In The Mitten State, Jonathan M. Coumes
Look To Windward: The Michigan Environmental Protection Act And The Case For Atmospheric Trust Litigation In The Mitten State, Jonathan M. Coumes
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Failure to address climate change or even slow the growth of carbon emissions has led to innovation in the methods activists are using to push decisionmakers away from disaster. In the United States, climate activists frustrated by decades of legislative and executive inaction have turned to the courts to force the hand of the state. In their most recent iteration, climate cases have focused on the public trust doctrine, the notion that governments hold their jurisdictions’ natural resources in trust for the public. Plaintiffs have argued that the atmosphere is part of the public trust and that governments have a …
Energy-Water Nexus, The Clean Power Plan, And Integration Of Water Resource Concerns Into Energy Decision-Making, Sarah Ladin
Energy-Water Nexus, The Clean Power Plan, And Integration Of Water Resource Concerns Into Energy Decision-Making, Sarah Ladin
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Energy regulation in the United States is now at a crossroads. The EPA has begun the process to officially repeal the Clean Power Plan and currently has no plan to replace it with new rulemaking to regulate carbon emissions from the U.S. energy sector. Even though the Clean Power Plan is more or less at its end, its regulatory structure stands as a model of the way decision-makers in the United States regulate the energy sector and the environment. Since the beginning of the modern environmental legal system, decision-makers have chosen to silo the system. Statutes and agencies focus on …
Parallels In Public And Private Environmental Governance, Sarah E. Light, Eric W. Orts
Parallels In Public And Private Environmental Governance, Sarah E. Light, Eric W. Orts
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Private actors, including business firms and non-governmental organizations, play an essential role in addressing today’s most serious environmental challenges. Yet scholars have not fully recognized the parallels between public environmental law and the standard-setting and enforcement functions of private environmental governance. “Instrument choice” in environmental law scholarship is generally understood to refer to government actors choosing among options from the public law “toolkit,” which includes prescriptive rules, the creation of property rights, the leveraging of markets, and informational regulation. Each of these major public law tools, however, has a parallel in private environmental governance. This Article first provides a descriptive …
Avoiding Jeopardy, Without The Questions: Recovery Implementation Programs For Endangered Species In Western River Basins, Reed D. Benson
Avoiding Jeopardy, Without The Questions: Recovery Implementation Programs For Endangered Species In Western River Basins, Reed D. Benson
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
The application of the Endangered Species Act to water resources has generated much controversy in the American West. In several western river basins, however, Recovery Implementation Programs (RIPs) provide an alternative, collaborative approach to ESA compliance. These programs offer an enhanced role for states and stakeholders in ESA decisionmaking, and increased certainty that ESA requirements will not disrupt ongoing water project operations and established uses. This Article examines the origins, purposes, and elements of various RIPs, with particular emphasis on these programs’ approach to compliance with the requirements of ESA section 7 for federal agency actions. The Article also considers …