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Full-Text Articles in Law

Can The Law Track Scientific Risk And Technological Innovation?: The Problem Of Regulatory Definitions And Nanotechnology, David A. Dana Jan 2010

Can The Law Track Scientific Risk And Technological Innovation?: The Problem Of Regulatory Definitions And Nanotechnology, David A. Dana

Faculty Working Papers

The functioning of a regulatory regime often turns on what is defined to be included in the scope of regulation and what is defined to be outside. In constructing the definitions of what is regulated, two key challenges are to align the defintions with the risks that motivated the establishment of the regulatory regime and to build in dynamism into the defintions so that they adapt to changes in scientific understanding and technology. This Chapter of a forthcoming book from Cambridge University Press (David Dana, ed., The Nanotechnology Challenge), explores these challnegs in the context of nanotechnology.


Choose The Best Answer: Organizing Climate Change Negotiation In The Obama Administration, Jonathan Zasloff Jan 2009

Choose The Best Answer: Organizing Climate Change Negotiation In The Obama Administration, Jonathan Zasloff

NULR Online

No abstract provided.


Valuing Foreign Lives And Civilizations In Cost-Benefit Analysis: The Case Of The United States And Climate Change Policy, David A. Dana Jan 2009

Valuing Foreign Lives And Civilizations In Cost-Benefit Analysis: The Case Of The United States And Climate Change Policy, David A. Dana

Faculty Working Papers

This Article explores the case for including losses of foreign (non-U.S.) lives and settlements in the estimated cost to the United States of unmitigated climate change in the future. The inclusion of losses of such foreign lives and settlements in cost benefit analysis (CBA) could have large implications not only for U.S. climate change policy but also for policies adopted by other nations and the practice of CBA generally. One difficult problem is how to assess U.S. residents' willingness to pay to prevent the losses of foreign lives and settlements. This Article discusses internet-based surveys that are a first step …


Reforming Section 10 And The Habitat Conservation Plan Program, David A. Dana Jan 2009

Reforming Section 10 And The Habitat Conservation Plan Program, David A. Dana

Faculty Working Papers

This Chapter in a forthcoming book to be published by AEI (edited by Jonathan Adler) provides a framework for HCP reform. The Chapter first briefly reviews the history of HCP regulations and guidance, and what we know about HCPs in practice (which is limited). It offers a range of reforms to address problems in the current HCP approach, including requirements that the Services assemble a better database regarding current HCPs and report to Congress on the program periodically; greater reliance on programmatic regulations adopted after notice and comment; development of guidelines for assessing the likely or possible environmental impacts of …


When Less Liability May Mean More Precaution: The Case Of Nanotechnology, David A. Dana Jan 2009

When Less Liability May Mean More Precaution: The Case Of Nanotechnology, David A. Dana

Faculty Working Papers

The heart of the Article is an exploration of the possible role of common law tort liability in both encouraging and deterring voluntary, precautionary study of new products generally and nanotechnology products in particular. A key variable in considering liability's role as an incentive or deterrent to testing is the manufacturer's subjective assessment of the probability that any injuries from its product would be detected by the injured parties and successfully attributed to the product absent research by the manufacturer itself on the adverse effects of the product. Another key variable is the legal standard for tort liability, and specifically …


The Contextual Rationality Of The Precautionary Principle, David A. Dana Jan 2009

The Contextual Rationality Of The Precautionary Principle, David A. Dana

Faculty Working Papers

This article defines the precautionary principle (PP) primarily based on what it is not: it is not quantitative cost-benefit analysis (CBA) or cost-cost analysis of the sort we associate with the Office of Management and Budget in the United States and U.S. policymaking and policy discourse generally. In this definition, the PP is a form of analysis in which the costs of a possible environmental or health risk are not quantified, or if they are, any quantification is likely to be inadequate to capture the full extent of the costs of not taking regulatory measures to mitigate or avoid the …


The Mismatch Between Public Nuisance Law And Global Warming, David A. Dana Jan 2008

The Mismatch Between Public Nuisance Law And Global Warming, David A. Dana

Faculty Working Papers

The federal courts using the common law method of case-by-case adjudication may have institutional advantages over the more political branches, such as perhaps more freedom from interest group capture and more flexibility to tailor decisions to local conditions. Any such advantages, however, are more than offset by the disadvantages of relying on the courts in common resource management in general and in the management of the global atmospheric commons in particular. The courts are best able to serve a useful function resolving climate-related disputes once the political branches have acted by establishing a policy framework and working through the daunting …


Exclusionary Eminent Domain, David A. Dana Jan 2008

Exclusionary Eminent Domain, David A. Dana

Faculty Working Papers

This Article explores the phenomenon of "exclusionary eminent domain" – the exercise of eminent domain that has the effect of excluding low-income households from an otherwise predominantly or entirely middle-class or wealthy neighborhood or locality, whether or not exclusion itself was the purpose of the condemnation. All condemnations exclude the condemned owner (and his or her tenants, if any) from the condemned property. Exercises of what I am calling "exclusionary eminent domain" are doubly exclusive because the displaced residents are unable to afford new housing in the same neighborhood or locality as their now-condemned, former homes. In exclusionary eminent domain, …


Taking The Legislative Temperature: Which Federal Climate Change Legislative Proposal Is “Best”? (Part Ii), Victor B. Flatt Dec 2007

Taking The Legislative Temperature: Which Federal Climate Change Legislative Proposal Is “Best”? (Part Ii), Victor B. Flatt

NULR Online

No abstract provided.


Taking The Legislative Temperature: Which Federal Climate Change Legislative Proposal Is "Best"?, Victor B. Flatt Dec 2007

Taking The Legislative Temperature: Which Federal Climate Change Legislative Proposal Is "Best"?, Victor B. Flatt

NULR Online

No abstract provided.


Legal Aspects Of The French Nuclear Tests, Anthony D'Amato Jan 1967

Legal Aspects Of The French Nuclear Tests, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

Even at the level of scholarly or diplomatic argumentation it is important to inquire into the competing interests and legal factors involved in the atmospheric tests. This is true not only because differing political expectations or even measures might depend on the consensus as to the legality or illegality of the French tests, but also because the precedential value of the tests will be of greater or less force depending upon whether there is agreement at the time of the tests that France was or was not acting within her international legal rights.