Law Commons^™

Regulation By Adaptive Management--Is It Possible?, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Today's voluminous literature on adaptive management traces its roots to Professor C.S. Holling's seminal work, Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management. Although almost thirty years have passed since he and his colleagues first described the adaptive management methodology, no work on the topic has improved on their core theory. Its essence is an iterative, incremental decisionmaking process built around a continuous process of monitoring the effects of decisions and adjusting decisions accordingly. It is in other words, far more suited to the needs of future regulatory challenges than is prescriptive regulation. My focus, however, is not on what adaptive management should …

Transmission Siting In Deregulated Wholesale Power Markets: Re-Imagining The Role Of Courts In Resolving Federal-State Siting Impasses, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

During most of the twentieth century, state and local regulatory bodies coordinated the siting or power plants and transmission lines. These bodies focused on two important issues: 1) the determination of need, so as to avoid unnecessary economic duplication of costly infrastructure; and 2) environmental protection, so as to provide local land use and other environmental concerns input on the placement of necessary generation and transmission facilities. With the rise of a deregulated wholesale power market, the issue of need is increasingly determined by the market, not regulators. Environmental concerns with siting, however, frequently remain contested - especially locally - …

The Private Life Of Public Law, Michael P. Vandenbergh

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article proposes a new conception of the administrative regulatory state that accounts for the vast networks of private agreements that shadow public regulations. The traditional account of the administrative state assigns a limited role to private actors: private firms and interest groups seek to influence regulations, and after the regulations are finalized, regulated firms face a comply-or-defy decision. In recent years, scholars have noted that private actors play an increasing role in the traditional government standard setting, implementation and enforcement functions. This Article demonstrates that the private role in each of these regulatory functions is far greater than others …

Order Without Social Norms: How Personal Norm Activation Can Protect The Environment, Michael P. Vandenbergh

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article tackles a leading problem confronting norms theorists and regulators: how can the law induce changes in behavior when the material costs to the individual outweigh the benefits and there is no close-knit community to impose sanctions for failure to change? Because private individuals and households are now surprisingly large contributors to environmental problems ranging from toxic pollution to climate change, environmental policy makers face compelling examples of these negative-payoff, loose-knit group situations. This Article suggests that internalized personal norms, rather than social norms, are the most important initial target of opportunity for influencing this kind of behavior.

Drawing …

Toward A Common Law Of Ecosystem Services, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article suggests ways in which the common law can integrate concepts of ecosystem services to fulfill pragmatic objectives of common law doctrine. Rather than requiring a radical departure from traditional common law doctrine as is often proposed in environmental literature on the common law, ecosystem services can fold seamlessly into existing common law principles as a source of new knowledge and changed circumstances.