Law Commons^™

Economics V. Equity Ii: The European Experience, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

Lawmakers in the European Union and its member states, like their counterparts in the United States, increasingly are using economic tools to protect the environment while reducing their focus on command and control regulation. The reliance on economic approaches to environmental protection may disproportionately impact low income and minority communities. Although evidence of environmental injustice in Europe is not as strong as in the United States, several recent studies demonstrate that traditional environmental protection measures in Europe have disproportionately funneled pollution to low income communities. Economic-based environmental measures can only exacerbate that trend.

Implementing Everglades Restoration, Mary Doyle

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Miccosukee Indians And Environmental Law: A Confederacy Of Hope, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

Articles

Two legal orphans have found each other. The older one is "Indian Law," a confused, embarrassing, and twisted body of legal rules that "explain" the relationships between the United States and its native peoples. The newer one is "Environmental Law," a complex and jumbled stew of cases and statutes that "prescribe" proper behavior between modern Americans and the natural world.

Both these children of the law are suspected of subversion—the one is tainted by advocates of separate sovereignties, the other by critics of the American way of life. For Native Americans and environmentalists, their recent legal merger is a confederacy …

Federal Regulation Of Isolated Wetlands After Swancc, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

This past January the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Clean Water Act (CWA) did not authorize the federal government to prohibit a landfill operator from filling isolated ponds on its property merely because the ponds were used as habitat by migratory birds. The National Association of Home Builders claimed that the decision in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (SWANCC) was "a major legal victory for home builders and other private property owners." Critics of the SWANCC decision argued that it jeopardizes "perhaps a fifth of the water bodies in the United …

Private Plaintiffs, Public Rights: Article Ii And Environmental Citizen Suits, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

This Article will focus on the Take Care Clause of Article II, the most serious of the Article II challenges to the environmental citizen suit provisions. Justice Scalia and legal commentators have argued that Article II prohibits a citizen from suing to enforce federal laws unless the citizen has suffered a concrete and personal ("individuated") injury as a result of the action that he is challenging. Professor Cass Sunstein and others have dissented, and have suggested that Congress can authorize citizens to sue to enforce federal laws even when the citizens have not suffered individuated injuries.

The first Part of …

Executive Orders And Presidential Commands: Presidents Riding To The Rescue Of The Environment, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

Articles

Presidential executive orders are legal and political documents. They are also uniquely personal utterances of the president and the administration. The right words at the appropriate time can motivate and move the human spirit, and they can link this president and this moment to the strongest of ideas. Being personal and tending to the heroic, the executive order can thus be perceived as accomplishing a great public good.

This article will explore the pros and cons of the executive order tool. I will then evaluate a number of executive orders that have impacted contemporary environmental policy. I will conclude by …