Law Commons^™

Applying Administrative Law Principles To Hydraulic Fracturing, Joel M. Pratt

Joel M Pratt

Because fracking regulators and industry need both legal clarity and the ability to react to new information, courts should apply principles of administrative deference to resolve conflicts between state and local fracking regulations.Under these principles, courts weigh expert agency decision making more heavily when the agency has acted reasonably. When faced with a conflict between state and local fracking laws, courts should adopt administrative principles and privilege expert agency regulations rather than engage in an independent judicial inquiry. Part I provides background on fracking and argues that states are in the best position to regulate the practice. Part II then …

Sustaining An Unsustainable Fuel Source: How Lifecycle Greenhouse Gas Limitations Can Improve The Sustainability Of The Tar Oil Industry, Brittany Debord

Brittany DeBord

The United States seeks to achieve energy security and self-sufficiency by acquiring energy from Canadian tar sands and promoting a domestic tar sands industry. However, support for this industry is inconsistent with the greenhouse gas reduction policies of the Energy Independence and Security Act and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation, since tar oil extraction creates three times more carbon emissions than conventional oil extraction. Legislation limiting lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions has already been implemented through the Renewable Fuel Standard Program in response to concerns that plant-based fuel production leads to greater carbon emissions than intended. Since the lifecycle …

Regulation Of Chemical Risks: Lessons For Tsca Reform From Canada And The European Union, Adam Abelkop, John D. Graham

Adam Abelkop

The United States Congress is considering reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976. This Article compares recent reforms in Europe and Canada in order to draw lessons for TSCA reform. In 2006, the European Union enacted the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation while Canada used existing authority under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) of 1999 to initiate the 2006 Chemicals Management Plan (CMP). Focusing on the tens of thousands of industrial chemicals now in use in the US, we offer several suggestions for TSCA reform based on the European and Canadian experiences. …

Complexity And Simplicity In Law: A Review Essay (Cass R. Sunstein, Simpler: The Future Of Government (2003)), David M. Driesen

David M Driesen

This essay discusses Cass Sunstein’s book, Simpler: The Future of Government, in order to advance our understanding of the concepts of complex and simple law. Many writers identify complexity with uncertainty and high cost. This essay argues that complexity bears no fixed relationship to costs or benefits. It also shows that complexity’s relationship to uncertainty is so ambiguous that it is profitable to treat complexity and uncertainty as separate concepts. It develops useful separate concepts of legal and compliance complexity that will aid efforts to simplify law, like the one Sunstein claims to have embarked upon. It also argues that …

The National Historic Preservation Act: Preserving History, Impacting Foreign Relations?, Mark P. Nevitt

Mark P Nevitt

The National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) is a remarkable statutory success story, properly lauded for protecting American historic properties since its passage in 1966. But there is another, more intricate story to the NHPA. Congress added a unique extraterritoriality provision to the NHPA, implementing U.S. obligations under the World Heritage Convention (WHC), a treaty that protects properties of cultural and natural heritage worldwide. This provision requires federal agencies to take into account the effect of any undertaking outside the United States on the applicable nation’s equivalent National Register. Its proper scope and jurisdiction were unclear–until recently.A federal district court ruled …

A Legal Approach To The Improvement Of Energy Efficiency In Europe And The United States: Greening The Existing Building Stock, Teresa -. Parejo

Teresa - Parejo

In large cities buildings are responsible for 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions in the EU, and 70% of energy consumption and 40% of CO2 emissions in the US. Hence, improving the energy performance of buildings is a very cost-effective way to fight against climate change.

Most of the potential for energy savings is in existing buildings so they provide the greatest opportunities and challenges, but the measures adopted until today to improve energy efficiency, despite some innovative proposals, have been insufficient and mainly focused in new buildings. All the actions developed either by the EU and …

The Presentment Clause Meets The Suspension Power: The Affordable Care Act’S Long And Winding Road To Implementation, Mitchell Widener

Mitchell Widener

The presentment clause MEETs the Suspension Power: The Affordable Care Act’s Long and Winding Road to Implementation

Mitchell J. Widener

Abstract

To enact a law, the Presentment Clause of the Constitution mandates that both Houses of Congress present a bill to the President who either signs it into law or vetoes it. The Founders included this provision to prevent presidents from emulating King James II, who would routinely suspend Parliament’s laws to favor political constituents. Additionally, the Presentment Clause served to enhance the separation-of-powers principle implied in the Constitution.

Within the past year, President Obama has suspended multiple portions of …

C(R)Ap And Trade: The Brave New World Of Non-Point Source Nutrient Trading And Using Lessons From Greenhouse Gas Markets To Make It Work, Victor B. Flatt

Victor B Flatt

After several decades of improvement, water quality in the United States is getting worse, and the problem is primarily caused by run-off from non-point sources, such as farms and urban development. These non-point sources have never had regulatory mandates in the Clean Water Act, and have proven very difficult to control. With little likelihood of comprehensive statutory changes, the EPA and the states that administer the Clean Water Act have looked to other regulatory means to address this problem. One of the most prominent has been the use of markets in pollution (particularly for nutrient pollution from run-off) to provide …

Putting A Price On Carbon: The Metaphor, David M. Driesen

David M Driesen

This Essay analyzes the characterization of both pollution taxes and so-called cap-and-trade programs addressing greenhouse gas emissions as policies that “put a price on carbon,” a characterization that has come to dominate both policy discussion and much modern scholarship on environmental instrument choice. It shows that the rationale for characterizing cap-and-trade— a quantitative rather than a pricing mechanism— as putting a price on carbon suggests that analysts should likewise treat traditional regulation as a mechanism putting a price on carbon. Treating “market-based mechanisms” as uniquely putting a price on carbon reflects and perpetuates a tendency to see markets and government …

Defending The Environment: A Mission For The World's Militaries, Mark P. Nevitt

Mark P Nevitt

Critics often fault the U.S. military for its environmental stewardship, and legal scholarship frequently highlights efforts by the military to seek national security exemptions from various environmental laws and the military’s poor cleanup record. Yet the Department of Defense (“DoD”) is largely subject to and complies with the full array of American environmental laws in the same manner and extent as any agency of the federal government. While the military’s environmental record is far from perfect, a comparative legal survey shows that the U.S. is at the relative forefront of effectively balancing environmental stewardship with national security.

This article surveys …

Will More, Better, Cheaper, And Faster Monitoring Improve Environmental Management?, Ryan P. Kelly

Ryan P Kelly

Two critical problems in environmental management are a lack of primary data and the difficulty of assessing the environmental impacts of human activities. Producing the information necessary to address these twin challenges is often difficult and expensive, which impedes decisionmaking in environmental management. I focus here on the possibility of making data collection more powerful and more cost-effective with a suite of analyses made tractable by emerging technology for genetic analysis. More, better, cheaper, and faster information about the planet’s living resources promises to influence a wide range of legal and policy processes—from Clean Water Act compliance and related public …