Law Commons^™

A Realistic Evaluation Of Climate Change Litigation Through The Lens Of A Hypothetical Lawsuit, Shi-Ling Hsu

Shi-Ling Hsu

Several dozen cases that can be classified as "climate change litigation" have been filed worldwide, and legal scholars have already generated a considerable amount of writing on the phenomenon. The debate and scholarship has sometimes gotten ahead of itself, reflecting on the normative implications of outcomes that are still speculative at this point. This article seeks to ground this debate by analyzing the actual legal doctrines that may serve as bases for liability, and seeks to make a realistic evaluation of the likelihood of success of these types of suits. Climate change litigation, in its various forms, raises issues of …

The Identifiability Bias In Environmental Law, Shi-Ling Hsu

Shi-Ling Hsu

The identifiability effect is the human propensity to have stronger emotions regarding identifiable individuals or groups rather than abstract ones. The more information that is available about a person, the more likely this person's situation will influence human decision-making. This human propensity has biased law and public policy against environmental and ecological protection because the putative economic victims of environmental regulation are usually easily identifiable workers that lose their jobs, while the beneficiaries – people who avoid a premature death from air or water pollution, people who would be saved by medicinal compounds available only in rare plant and animal …

Pollution Tax Heuristics: An Empirical Study Of Willingness To Pay For Higher Gasoline Taxes, Shi-Ling Hsu, Joshua Walters, Anthony Purgas

Shi-Ling Hsu

Economists widely agree that in concept, pollution taxes are the most cost-effective means of reducing pollution. With the advent of monitoring and enforcement technologies, the case for pollution taxation is generally getting stronger on the merits. Despite widespread agreement among economists, however, pollution taxes remain unpopular, especially in North America. Some oppose pollution taxes because of a suspicion that government would misspend the tax proceeds, while others oppose pollution taxes because they would impose economic hardships upon certain individuals, groups, or industries. And there is no pollution tax more pathologically hated as the gasoline tax. This is unfortunate from an …

Some Quasi-Behavioral Arguments For Environmental Taxation, Shi-Ling Hsu

Shi-Ling Hsu

For decades, economists have advocated for the adoption of environmental taxes to reduce pollution at least cost. While this campaign has largely succeeded in Europe, where a wide variety of environmental taxes are in effect, environmental taxes are few and far between in North America, as economists have failed to persuade policymakers to make any significant policy use of environmental taxes. This paper presents three new arguments that draw heavily upon the behavioralist and organizational literatures, and augment the economic arguments proffered thus far in favor of environmental taxes.

First, environmental taxation creates conditions under which firms undertake creative processes …