Law Commons^™

Natural Resources Defense Council V. United States Environmental Protection Agency, Erick A. Valencia

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In Natural Resources Defense Council v. United States Environmental Protection Agency, the court was asked to review the EPA’s Vessel General Permit that set limits on the discharge of pollutants in a ship’s ballast water. Ballast water discharge has become one of the major contributors to the spread of invasive species, especially in the Great Lakes where short voyages allow organisms to easily survive in ballast water. The EPA’s lack of information was a problem of its own making because it prohibited the Science Advisory Board and National Academy of Sciences from adequately exploring available technology before setting the effluent …

The Role Of The State, Multinational Oil Companies, International Law & The International Community: Intersection Of Human Rights & Environmental Degradation Climate Change In The 21st Century Caused By Traditional Extractive Practices, The Amazon Rainforest, Indigenous People And Universal Jurisdiction To Resolve The Accountability Issue, Marcela Cabrera Luna

Master's Theses

Local, national and international conventions that protect indigenous sovereignty and their territories, where many of the resources are extracted from by multinational corporations (MNCs) particularly oil, the number one commodity of the world and cause of climate change, continue to be jeopardized because of the lack of a clear international legal framework that can protect them and potentially hold multinationals accountable for their actions. These practices are causing not only environmental issues to the indigenous and surrounding communities, but climate change is in fact, the real human rights issue of the 21^st century and it affects everyone. By using …

Legal Aspects Of Coastal Adaption & Resilience In Rhode Island: A Workshop For Municipal Solicitors And Staff, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Marine Affairs Institute, Sea Grant Rhode Island, Coastal Resources Management Council, University Of Rhode Island Graduate School Of Oceanography

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Tpp Would Let Foreign Investors Bypass The Canadian Public Interest, Lisa E. Sachs, Lise Johnson

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In early October, prime ministerial candidate Justin Trudeau promised Canadians “a full and open public debate” on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. With 30 chapters that would bind Canada to sweeping agreements on everything from services to intellectual property to the environment to procurement, there is much to debate.

Virginia's Water Resource Law: A System Of Exemptions And Preferences Challenging The Future Of Public Health, The Environment, And Economic Development, Jefferson D. Reynolds

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Texas Colonias: Injustice By Definition, Caitlin Lewis

Environmental and Earth Law Journal (EELJ)

Colonias are usually characterized as rural or semi-rural slums inhabited by Mexican-origin immigrants and Mexican Americans. This Comment examines the socioeconomic and environmental burdens faced by Texas colonias and the public and private attempts to address these hardships.

Clean Energy Federalism, Felix Mormann

Faculty Scholarship

Legal scholarship tends to approach the law and policy of clean energy from an environmental law perspective. As hydraulic fracturing, renewable energy integration, nuclear reactor (re)licensing, transport biofuel mandates, and other energy issues have pushed to the forefront of the environmental law debate, clean energy law has begun to emancipate itself. The emerging literature on clean energy federalism is a symptom of this emancipation. This Article adds to that literature by offering two case studies, a novel model for policy integration, and theoretical insights to elucidate the relationship between environmental federalism and clean energy federalism.

Renewable portfolio standards and feed-in …

Panel: Ethical Dilemmas: Finding Common Ground On Controversial Issues, Lesley Blackner, Richard C. Foltz, Brion Blackwelder, Lisa C. Schiavinato, Alyson C. Flournoy

Alyson Flournoy

This panel discussion applied ethics to the theme of the 8th Annual Public Interest Environmental Conference. Panelists examined ways ethics may help reconcile industry (such as business and development) with environmentalism.

Regulation-Tolerant Weapons, Regulation-Resistant Weapons And The Law Of War, Sean Watts

International Law Studies

The historical record of international weapons law reveals both regulation-tolerant weapons and regulation-resistant weapons, identifiable by a number of criteria, including effectiveness, novelty, deployment, medical compatibility, disruptiveness and notoriety. This article identifies these criteria both to explain and inform existing weapons law, and also to facilitate efforts to identify weapons and emerging technology that may prove susceptible to future law of war regulation. By charting both the history and methodology of weapons law with a view toward identifying forces and influences that have made some weapons susceptible to international regulation and made others resistant, this article offers a starting point …

Ohio House Bill 869 And Similar Statutes: An Analysis Of Mandatory Deposits On Beverage Containers To Promote Recycling In Relation To Environmental Control, Gary R. Myers

Akron Law Review

Proposed House Bill 8691 requires that all soft drink and beer containers carry a mandatory five-cent deposit in order to promote their recycling. This would necessarily cause a reduction in the litter discarded along Ohio's highways, parks, beaches, etc. To Ohio environmentalists, the Bill represents a major legislative response to the growing litter and solid waste problem. However, to industry it represents a major curtailment of their production growth and profits, specifically those industries whose production is concentrated solely or substantially in the area of non-returnable cans and bottles. If the Bill becomes effective it will be a major victory …

Four Years Of Environmental Impact Statements: A Review Of Agency Administration Of Nepa, Mary Anne Sullivan

Akron Law Review

This article will focus on the environmental impact statement process of NEPA functions. It will analyze some of the structural weaknesses of the process, some of the interests private parties are using it to protect and, finally, whether or not it is bringing us closer to a realization of the lofty goals the Act sets forth in Section 4331.

An International Legal Framework For Se4all: Human Rights And Sustainable Development Law Imperatives, Thoko Kaime, Robert L. Glicksman

Fordham International Law Journal

This Article examines the genesis and context of SE4All, placing the effort within both its historical and international policy contexts. It highlights the voluntary nature of the initiative and argues that its effective implementation and the achievement of its goals require the articulation of an applicable international legal framework that aids the transformation of SE4All’s policy actions into binding international legal commitments. The article contends that such a transformation does not depend on the creation of entirely new legal rules or institutions. Instead, an effective framework for successful implementation of SE4All can be derived from existing rules of international human …

The Increasing Privatization Of Environmental Permitting, Jessica Owley

Akron Law Review

This article examines the increasing privatization of environmental law by taking a close look at mitigation measures in permitting programs. As mitigation has become an increasingly important element of permitting programs, permitting agencies have looked for outside organizations to help design, monitor, and enforce the mitigation projects. Thus, compensatory mitigation projects provide a good lens for examining the role of private organizations in environmental law. There are good reasons for drawing on the power of private organizations. They can provide flexibility and expertise as well as increased capacity. However, concerns regarding democracy and accountability arise when government agencies hand off …

Toward Regional Governance In Environmental Law, Douglas R. Williams

Akron Law Review

This article will proceed in three parts. Part I provides a brief introduction to the structured institutional arrangements under the CAA and the CWA. I discuss how these programs have evolved in ways that depart from what may have been originally anticipated and how their structure poses impediments to effective environmental management. Part II provides a short summary of current thinking about the institutional architecture of our environmental programs, focusing primarily on the “environmental federalism” scholarship of recent years. I offer reasons for abandoning federalism as an appropriate institutional framework. Part III presents a conceptual, rather than tightly engineered, argument …

Looking Back To The Future: The Curmudgeon's Guide To The Future Of Environmental Law, Denis Binder

Akron Law Review

This essay is not intended as a traditional law review article, but as an essay intended to raise questions about the current status and future of Environmental Law in light of the three and one-half centuries of a developmental, exploitative ethos in America.

Power To The People: Restoring The Public Voice In Environmental Law, Albert C. Lin

Akron Law Review

Although the last forty years of environmental law have witnessed some successes, they have also increasingly revealed the limitations of existing laws and regulatory structures. Congress has been unable to pass substantial environmental legislation in recent years, notwithstanding widespread recognition of the need for better tools for responding to climate change, toxic chemicals, non-point source water pollution, and other problems. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) has struggled in the wake of limited resources and politicization to effectively use the tools it has, and its rulemaking processes are often dominated by industry and other repeat players. To deal with …

Aligning Regulation With The Informational Need: Ecosystem Services And The Next Generation Of Environmental Law, Keith H. Hirokawa, Elizabeth J. Porter

Akron Law Review

This article explores the Clinch Coalition decision to understand why the court would perpetuate a process that systematically rejects the relevance and value of ecosystem processes in the information gathering exercise entailed in these environmental regulations. The discussion begins with an introduction to ecosystem services as a study of human dependency on the services provided by functioning ecosystems. In the second section, the article turns to the Clinch Coalition decision to outline the arguments relied upon by the court to legitimize the Forest Service’s decision to avoid an ecosystem services analysis. The article then presents the Clinch Coalition decision as …

Adaptive Management And The Future Of Environmental Law, Eric Biber

Akron Law Review

Adaptive management is the new paradigm in environmental law. It is omnipresent in scholarship and management documents and is even starting to appear in court opinions. There have been many calls for environmental law to adapt itself to adaptive management by becoming more flexible and dynamic. But does adaptive management really warrant a revolution in environmental law? Or is it adaptive management that might need to adapt to the world of environmental law? There has been an abundance of scholarship on the strengths of adaptive management, making the case for changing environmental law to embrace adaptive management. But answering the …

Environmental Law And The Collapse Of New Deal Constitutionalism, Arthur F. Mcevoy

Akron Law Review

This Article, which is a précis for a book in progress about the history of late twentieth-century U.S. environmental law, argues that our modern environmental law is peculiarly a creature of the New Deal. Despite its obvious legacy from common-law nuisance and Progressive regulation, what makes modern environmental law different from anything that came before is the way in which reformers built it out of parts copied from New Deal reform projects: cooperative federalism, the tax-and-spend power, representation-reinforcing, rights trumps, and so on. Environmental law’s history, its character, its accomplishments, and its shortcomings thus entwined with those of the New …

Replacing Sustainability, Robin Kundis Craig, Melinda Harm Benson

Akron Law Review

This Article argues that, from a policy perspective, we must face the impossibility of even defining—let alone pursuing—a goal of “sustainability” in a world characterized by such extreme complexity, radical uncertainty, and discomfiting loss of stationarity. Instead, we need new policy directions and orientations that provide the necessary capacity to deal with these “wicked problems” in a meaningful and equitable way. The realities of current and emerging SES dynamics warrant a new set of tools and approaches to governance of those systems. Part II of this Article provides a brief history of sustainability and sustainable development, including corollary emphases on …

Symposium: The Next Generation Of Environmental And Natural Resources Law: What Has Changed In Forty Years And What Needs To Change As A Result, Kalyani Robbins

Akron Law Review

Introduction to nine perspectives changing in the field of Environmental and Natural Resources Law. These discussions, and our shared concern for the issues that will impact the planet for centuries to come, are so valuable.

Becoming Us, Carter Dillard

Carter Dillard

Global Trade Impacts: Addressing The Health, Social And Environmental Consequences Of Moving International Freight Through Our Communities, Martha Matsuoka, Andrea Hricko, Robert Gottlieb, Juan Delara

Martha Matsuoka

As ports and goods movement activity expands throughout the United States, a major challenge is how to make the adverse impacts of freight transportation a more central part of economic development, policy and planning discussions and transportation decision making. In 2009, faculty and staff from the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute of Occidental College and from the environmental health sciences and regional equity programs of the University of Southern California (USC) began a study of this evolving global trade and freight transportation system, focusing on areas in the United States where the system is expanding and where community, labor and …

Environmental Assessment As Planning And Disclosure Tool: Greenpeace Canada V. Canada (Attorney General), Martin Zp Olszynski

Dalhousie Law Journal

In Greenpeace Canada v. Canada (2014), the applicants successfully challenged the adequacy of the environmental assessment report prepared in relation to a proposed nuclear power plant. In assessing that report, the Federal Court described environmental assessment as an "evidence-based and democratically accountable" decision-making process. In this comment I suggest that this characterization represents the most significant-if perhaps also long overdue development in Canadian environmental assessment law since the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Friends of the Oldman River Society v. Canada. I also discuss some of the implications of this characterization, including the extent to which environmental effects must be …

Advancing Climate Justice In International Law: Evaluating The United Nations Human Rights Based Approach, Dr. Damilola S. Olawuyi

Environmental and Animal Law

The Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University College of Law's Center for International Law & Justice and the Environment, Development & Justice Program presented the First Annual Climate and Energy Justice Lecture featuring Dr. Damilola S. Olawuyi. Dr. Olawuyi teaches and conducts research in the area of public international law, specializing in natural resources, energy and environment, oil and gas law and international human rights law.

The Long-Term Tort: In Search Of A New Causation Framework For Natural Resource Damages, Sanne H. Knudsen

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comments: Hydraulic Fracturing: Evaluating Fracking Regulations, Blake Lara

University of Baltimore Journal of Land and Development

The demand for nonrenewable energy resources has increased in nations around the world despite the reality that these remaining resources are both scarce, and increasingly difficult to acquire. In 2010 Earth's reserves held the equivalent of approximately 406 billion tons of natural gas and oi1. However, at yearly consumption rates, this amount would only serve the planet's energy needs for about fifty years. The rapid elimination of conventional sources for oil and gas has led to the utilization of alternative methods to access sources that were previously not worth drilling. In the United States, for example, there are several types …

The Failure Of Environmental International Law During Times Of War, Blake Lara

University of Baltimore Journal of Land and Development

Throughout history, war and armed conflict have maintained a continuous presence around the world. Though the reasons for war change, various nations emerge and subside, and populations alter, one of the constant elements of war is its degrading effect on the environment. In addition to indirect effects on the environment that ultimately result from war, nations have used the environment as both a weapon and target of war. For example, during the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans salted Athenian lands to make them infertile. In the Franco-Dutch War from 1672 to 1678, dikes and damns were destroyed in order to create …

Billy Joel: The Chronicler Of The Suburbanization In New York, Patricia E. Salkin, Irene Crisci

Touro Law Review

Artists often chronicle historical developments through their chosen medium. In the case of Billy Joel, some of his lyrics can be traced to the early sustainability movements as he wrote about the migration of people from the cities and the attendant problems with rapid suburbanization. Described by Tony Bennett as “a poet, a performer, a philosopher and today’s American songbook,” his lyrics address, among other topics, land use, community development, and environmental issues. Following World War II, there was a major shift in population settlement patterns in the United States. As war heroes returned home, not only did the country …

A Hole In The Plastic Bag: Identifying And Closing The Loophole In The California Environmental Quality Act, Scott Menger

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.