Law Commons^™

B.Y.O.B. (Bring Your Own Bag): A Comprehensive Assessment Of China’S Plastic Bag Policy, Mary Beckwith O'Loughlin

Mary Beckwith O'Loughlin

On June 1, 2008, the Chinese government enacted a nationwide policy prohibiting all stores from freely distributing plastic bags to customers. This new policy requires that, henceforth, all retailers must charge a nominal fee for plastic bags and that those purchasable bags must meet certain quality requirements to improve their potential reusability. These retailers, which include everything from grocery and clothing stores to farmer’s markets and food stalls, individually determine how much to charge for their bags and get to keep all related proceeds. The policy is an effort to mitigate the “white pollution” that is choking China’s landscape, as …

Fourth-Generation Environmental Law: Integrationist And Multimodal, Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold

Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold

The Florida Beach Case And The Road To Judicial Takings, Michael Blumm

Michael Blumm

In Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld a state beach restoration project against landowner claims of an unconstitutional taking of the property. This result was not nearly as surprising as the fact that the Court granted certiorari on a case that turned on an obscure aspect of Florida property law: whether landowners adjacent to a beach had the right to maintain contact with the water and the right to future accretions of sand.

The Court’s curious interest in the case was piqued by the landowners’ recasting the case from the …

Property Rights On The New Frontier: Climate Change, Natural Resources Development, And Renewable Energy, Alexandra B. Klass

Alexandra B. Klass

This Article explores the history of natural resources law and pollution control law to provide insights into current efforts by states to create wind easements, solar easements, and other property rights in the use of or access to renewable resources. Development of these resources is critical to current efforts to address climate change, which has a foot in both natural resources law and pollution control law. This creates challenges for developing theoretical and policy frameworks in this area, particularly surrounding the role of property rights. Property rights have played an important role in both natural resources law and pollution control …

A Few Inconvenient Truths About Michael Crichton's State Of Fear: Lawyers, Causes And Science, Lea B. Vaughn

Lea B Vaughn

Abstract: Although Crichton has lost the battle regarding global warming, his characterization of lawyers and law practice remains unchallenged. This article challenges his damning portrait of lawyers as know-nothing, self aggrandizing manipulators of various social and environmental causes. A more nuanced examination of “cause lawyering” reveals that lawyers are not part of a vast conspiracy to grab power through the causes for which many work; in fact, the rules of professional responsibility as well as the structure of “cause lawyering” limit their power and influence. Regardless, lawyers are nonetheless vital, and generally principled, participants in the debates and causes that …

Practical Guide To Environmental Law And Regulatory Compliance In Texas, Richard Faulk, John S. Gray

Richard Faulk

History teaches us that the natural development of our land and resources has been a contentious undertaking. Until recently, the issues that today make up the corpus of “environmental law” were not to be found in environmental cases, legislative journals or in environmental law treatises. Instead, they were found under the rubrics of property, constitutional law, contract and the common law. Today, environmental law consists of a complex and interlocking body of treaties, conventions, statutes, regulations, and common law that attempt to work together in unison to regulate how we (individuals, governmental entities and businesses) interact with the rest of …

Constitutional Limitations On Land Use Controls, Environmental Regulations And Governmental Exactions (2010 Ed.), Garrett Power

Garrett Power

This electronic book is published in a searchable PDF format as a part of the E-scholarship Repository of the University of Maryland School of Law. It is an “open content” casebook intended for classroom use in courses in Land Use Control, Environmental Law and Constitutional Law. It consists of cases carefully selected from the two hundred years of American constitutional history which address the clash between public sovereignty and private property. It considers both the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property. The text consists of non-copyrighted material and readers are free to use it or re-mix …

Present At The Creation: The 1910 Big Burn And The Formative Days Of The U.S. Forest Service, Michael Blumm

Michael Blumm

This is a book review of Timothy Egan's "The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America."

The Conflicting Concerns Of The Automatic Stay And Environmental Laws, Brett T. Bradford

Brett T. Bradford

This paper explores the conflict between the automatic stay in bankruptcy law and environmental laws regarding cleaning up pollution. It is shown that the two areas of law have fundamentally different purposes that work to disrupt the bankruptcy process. The purpose of the automatic stay is seriously disrupted by the government imposing clean up costs on the debtor while in bankruptcy. This paper shows the affects of the two conflicting areas of law and possible solutions to the problem.

Cases And Materials On Environmental Law 2nd Edition, Oscar Gray

Oscar S. Gray

No abstract provided.

Physical Takings, Regulatory Takings, And Water Rights, Josh Patashnik

Josh Patashnik

Alleged takings of property are divided into two broad categories: physical takings claims, which are categorically subject to compensation, and regulatory takings claims, which are analyzed under the multi-factor Penn Central test and rarely result in compensation being paid. This Article addresses the question of whether alleged takings of water rights should be treated as physical or regulatory takings. It is an increasingly salient question in the West, where growing conflict between federal environmental laws and appropriative water rights has resulted in a proliferation of takings claims over the past decade. Because whether a claim is analyzed as a physical …

The Public Trust Doctrine And Private Property: The Accommodation Principle, Michael C. Blumm

Michael Blumm

The public trust doctrine is often accused of undermining property rights, when in fact the doctrine is actually a property concept, and a venerable one. Instead of threatening property rights, the doctrine functions to harmonize public and private rights in important resources, mostly those close to the land-water edge. This article demonstrates how this reconciliation takes place by examining case law recognizing the lineal and conceptual divisions by which the doctrine separates public and private rights. It also considers other ways in which the public trust doctrine balances public and private rights, such as ratifying small privatizations of public resources, …

An Extinction Of Transparency: The Opaque Endangered Species List, Benjamin W. Cramer

Benjamin W. Cramer

This article reconstructs the Endangered Species Act (ESA) as an informational statute with unresolved problems of transparency and disclosure. The article introduces the informational requirements of modern American environmental legislation, including the ESA. The article then examines the conflict between the substantive goals of the ESA and the procedural focus of American administrative jurisprudence. This is followed by a case history of the informational requirements of the ESA in general and the official endangered species list in particular, with coverage of political manipulation of the list and whether or not it is a truly transparent item of government-held information. The …

What Ever Happened To Canadian Environmental Law?, Stepan Wood, Georgia Tanner, Benjamin J. Richardson

Stepan Wood

This Article examines the history of Canadian environmental law to explain why it has become a laggard in both legal reform and environmental performance. Canadian environmental law has long been of interest to scholars worldwide, yet its record is often poorly understood. The Article contrasts recent developments with the seemingly progressive initiatives of the 1970s, and analyzes these trends in light of their political, economic, and governance context, as well as the wider critiques of environmental law. It argues that there is considerable room for Canadian governments to adopt more robust methods of environmental law, including following pioneering reforms advanced …

Anatomy Of Industry Resistance To Climate Change: A Familiar Litany, Robert L. Glicksman

Robert L. Glicksman

The industries that generate environmental risks in the United States have long been hostile to regulatory programs that increase their costs of operation and reduce their profits. While industry may have been unprepared for, and thus poorly organized to resist, the first wave of federal environmental legislation enacted during the “environmental decade” of the 1970s, it quickly marshaled its forces. Regulated or potentially regulated entities, their trade associations, and their lobbyists began a concerted effort to defeat, delay, and weaken environmental regulation.

This book chapter describes the process by which regulatory opponents successfully relied on free market ideology to couch …

Legal Questions And Scientific Answers: Ontological Differences And Epistemic Gaps In The Assessment Of Causal Relations, Lena Wahlberg

Lena Wahlberg

A large number of legal rules create an obligation to prevent, repair or otherwise mitigate damage to human health or the environment. Many of these rules require that a legally relevant causal relation between human behaviour and the damage at issue is established, and in the establishment of causal relations of this kind scientific information is often pressed into service. This thesis examines this specifically legal use of scientific information. It shows that many legally relevant causal relations cannot be established in this way. It also shows that the legal strategy for dealing with epistemic difficulties (uncertainty and ignorance) by …

Clean Energy Policy In Delaware: A Small Wonder, Collin O'Mara, Philip Cherry, David R. Hodas

David R. Hodas

No abstract provided.

The Global Food Crisis: Law, Policy, And The Elusive Quest For Justice, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Carmen G. Gonzalez

The food crisis of 2008, the subsequent financial crisis, and the ongoing climate crisis have created new challenges to the attainment of global food security. This essay examines the historic and current practices that have contributed to food insecurity in developing countries, and recommends several steps that the international community might take to promote the fundamental human right to food. The essay begins by outlining the trade and aid policies that laid the foundation for food insecurity in the global South from colonialism until the early twenty-first century. It then examines the impact of the financial crisis and the climate …