Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Law
An Economic Dynamic Approach To The Infrastructure Commons, David M. Driesen
An Economic Dynamic Approach To The Infrastructure Commons, David M. Driesen
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
This brief essay comments upon and extends Brett Frischman's idea of the infrastructure commons, i.e. that certain commons resources function as infrastructure. After suggesting some refinements of the infrastructure commons theory, this essay shows how an economic dynamic approach to law (see David M. Driesen, The Economic Dynamics of Environmental Law (MIT Press 2003) can help strengthen the case for proper management of the infrastructure commons, helping bolster the case for preserving the commons and identifying some of its limitations. The essay, like Professor Frischman's original article, applies infrastructure commons theory to both environmental and intellectual property resources.
Is Cost-Benefit Analysis Neutral?, David M. Driesen
Is Cost-Benefit Analysis Neutral?, David M. Driesen
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) owes much of its appeal to its image as a neutral principle for deciding upon the appropriate stringency of environmental, health, and safety regulation. This article examines whether CBA is neutral in effect, i.e. whether it sometimes makes regulations more stringent or regularly leads to weaker health, safety and environmental protection. It also addresses the question of whether CBA offers either an objective value-neutral method or procedural neutrality. This Article shows that CBA has almost always proven anti-environmental in practice and that, in many ways, it is anti-environmental in theory. It examines the practice of the Bush …
Regulatory Reform: The New Lochnerism?, David M. Driesen
Regulatory Reform: The New Lochnerism?, David M. Driesen
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
This article explores the question of whether contemporary regulatory reformers' attitudes toward government regulation have anything in common with those of the Lochner-era Court. It finds that both groups tend to favor value-neutral law guided by cost-benefit analysis over legislative value choices. Their skepticism toward redistributive legislation reflects shared beliefs that regulation often proves counterproductive in terms of its own objectives, fails demanding tests for rationality, and violates the natural order. This parallelism raises fresh questions about claims of neutrality and heightened rationality that serve as important justifications for modern regulatory reform.
Distributing The Costs Of Environmental, Health, And Safety Protection: The Feasibility Principle, Cost-Benefit Analysis, And Regulatory Reform, David M. Driesen
Distributing The Costs Of Environmental, Health, And Safety Protection: The Feasibility Principle, Cost-Benefit Analysis, And Regulatory Reform, David M. Driesen
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Distributing The Costs Of Environmental, Health, And Safety Protection: The Feasability Principle, Cost-Benefit Analysis, And Regulatory Reform, David M. Driesen
Distributing The Costs Of Environmental, Health, And Safety Protection: The Feasability Principle, Cost-Benefit Analysis, And Regulatory Reform, David M. Driesen
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
This article offers a normative theory justifying the feasability principle found in many environmental statutes. It then uses this theory to shine light on the regulatory reform debate. The feasability principle precludes widespread plant shutdowns while maximizing the stringency of regulation that does not have this outcome. The feasability principle provides meaningful guidance regarding both maximum and minimum stringency and a reasonable democratically chosen response to distributional concerns. Pollution's tendency to concentrate severe harms upon randomly selected pollution victims justifies the stringency of this approach. Normally, cost concerns cannot justify failure to protect people from death, illness, and ecological destruction. …
Loose Canons: Statutory Construction And The New Nondelegation Doctrine, David M. Driesen
Loose Canons: Statutory Construction And The New Nondelegation Doctrine, David M. Driesen
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
This article asks whether courts or administrative agencies have constitutional authority to narrowly construe statutes to save them from truly serious nondelegation claims. It explains why the Court correctly rejected administrative saving construction in American Trucking Ass'ns v. Whitman, and why the rationale supporting this rejection applies to courts as well as to agencies. This article also questions recent arguments that the nondelegation doctrine has found a new and appropriate home among canons of statutory construction. Judicial saving construction could lead to great expansion of judicial authority to make public law at the expense of the more democratic branches of …
Free Lunch Or Cheap Fix?: The Emissions Trading Idea And The Climate Change Convention, David M. Driesen
Free Lunch Or Cheap Fix?: The Emissions Trading Idea And The Climate Change Convention, David M. Driesen
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
Emissions trading has become a key component of U.S. environmental legal regimes. The U.S. has successfully lobbied to make international environmental benefit trading, an expanded form of emissions trading, a part of international efforts to address the threat of global climate change through the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol to that Convention. Legal scholars have lauded emissions trading as a "free lunch" that will encourage innovation, enhance democratic accountability, and reduce the cost of environmental cleanup. This article argues that emissions trading functions as a cheap fix, reducing short-term costs while tending to lessen innovation and …