Law Commons^™

Explaining Market Mechanisms, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, environmental regulation has seen a debate between supporters of traditional command-and-control regulation – a system of uniform pollution control standards – and proponents of a system of fees or permits for individual polluters known as market mechanisms. In this article, Professor Merrill considers two theories, wealth-maximization theory and distributional theory, that have been used to explain the emergence of market mechanisms in American environmental policy. He notes that (1) relatively few American environmental-enforcement programs have adopted market mechanisms; (2) those that exist overwhelmingly use grandfathered transferable permits instead of pollution taxes or auctioned permits; and (3) they …

Consultants' And Lawyers' Duties To Report Contamination, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

A recent decision by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) expands the duty of environmental consultants to report contamination on their clients' land. The rationale of the decision might also apply to lawyers and to states beyond New York.

Many federal, state and municipal laws require spills of pollutants to be reported to the government. People have received criminal penalties, including jail time, as well as heavy civil fines, for violating some of these requirements. Almost all of these rules apply only to persons who own, operate, or are otherwise in charge of the polluting facility, or …

Trends In The Supply And Demand For Environmental Lawyers, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

The boom times for environmental lawyers were the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The June 1990 issue of Money magazine called environmental law a "fast-track career." Two or three years of experience with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a state environmental agency, the environmental units of the Justice Department, or a state attorney general's office were a ticket to a high-paying job in the private sector. Law students were clamoring to enter the field and law firms were scrambling to find experienced environmental lawyers, or to recycle newly underemployed antitrust lawyers into this burgeoning field.

Environmental Justice And Natural Areas Protection Trends & Insight, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

There are 3,119,963 square miles in the continental United States. That sounds like plenty of space to put just about anything. However, when the facility seeking a home is environmentally controversial, finding even one square mile can seem almost impossible.

This country is now in its third major era in making siting decisions. The first era – unconstrained siting – lasted until the late 1960s. Then began the second era – protecting natural areas. In the early 1990s, we embarked upon a third era – environmental justice. The growing tensions between protecting natural areas and achieving environmental justice suggest that …