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Of Pigs, Plain Text, And Pyrrhic Victories: National Pork Producers Council V. United States Environmental Protection Agency, Christopher Ralph Brown Jd Mpa

Christopher Ralph Brown JD MPA

Any court charged with defining the scope of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) authority to enforce the Clean Water Act should do so in light of the Act’s ultimate purpose: to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.” So much is certain in statutory construction: if one possible statutory construction serves to frustrate the purpose of the statute according to its own terms, one should go back to the drawing board. This article evaluates the legal reasoning of a recent decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in light …