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Debunking Revisionist Understandings Of Environmental Cooperative Federalism: Collective Action Responses To Air Pollution, Jessica Wentz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The federal Clean Air Act initiated Congress's venture into cooperative environmental federalism in 1970. Forty-five years later, misconceptions about the nature of that venture (and similar examples of cooperative federalism under other federal environmental statutes) persist. In particular, some recent judicial decisions characterize environmental cooperative federalism as an equal partnership between the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the states. They also take umbrage at efforts by EPA to override state policies and initiatives that fail to conform to the minimum responsibilities that the statutes impose on the states, characterizing them as unlawful affronts to state sovereignty.

This chapter argues that …