Law Commons^™

Un Environment Guide For Energy Efficiency And Renewable Energy Laws, Richard L. Ottinger

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Guide is written as a sequel to the 2007 UN Environment Programme Handbook for Legal Draftsmen on Environmentally Sound Management of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Resources.

This Guide, as the Handbook, is written in response to needs expressed, particularly by energy efficiency and renewable energy project initiators, government officials, energy managers, project developers and particularly developing country energy legal draftsmen, asking for assistance in drafting legislative provisions for promotion and implementation of sound energy efficiency and renewable energy programs.

The Guide describes the key legal issues associated with efficiency and renewable energy resource development, and presents legislative options …

The Lautenberg Act: Chemical Safety Overhaul Of The Toxic Substances Control Act, Alyssa S. Rosen

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

On June 22, 2016, President Obama signed the Frank Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (Lautenberg Act), a landmark bipartisan compromise legislation designed to overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The Lautenberg Act makes it easier for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate toxic substances while providing the chemical industry with regulatory clarity and certainty. Law Librarians, practicing lawyers, and academics have taken note of this groundbreaking law that most likely will set the template for the next generation of environmental reform by tackling issues such as preemption of state law, protection of vulnerable populations, …

It’S Time For The Fda To Define ‘Natural’, Jason J. Czarnezki

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The authors discusses the FDA 's recent call for comments on a definition of the term natural as it applies to food.

Recapturing Water For Sustainability Through Redefinitions Of Navigability And Ownership, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In Defining "Navigability": Balancing State Court Flexibility and Private Rights in Waterways, 36 Cardozo L. Rev. 1415 (2015), Maureen Brady explains that over the last two centuries, state courts have broadened the concept of navigability, and applied the new definitions to alter existing land titles. As a consequence, many non-navigable waterways have become navigable waterways, increasing public ownership and extinguishing private rights.

Resilience And Raisins: Partial Takings And Coastal Climate Change Adaptation, Joshua Ulan Galperin, Zaheer Tajani

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The increased need for government-driven coastal resilience projects will lead to a growing number of claims for “partial takings” of coastal property. Much attention has been paid to what actions constitute a partial taking, but there is less clarity about how to calculate just compensation for such takings, and when compensation should be offset by the value of benefits conferred to the property owner. While the U.S. Supreme Court has an analytically consistent line of cases on compensation for partial takings, it has repeatedly failed (most recently in Horne v. U.S. Department of Agriculture) to articulate a clear rule. The …

Drinking Water Protection And Agricultural Exceptionalism, Margot J. Pollans

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Providing safe drinking water is a basic responsibility of government. In the United States, local water utilities shoulder much of this burden, but federal drinking water law sets these utilities up to fail. The primary problem arises in the context of nonpoint source pollution, where federal drinking water law favors end-of-line clean up by water utilities over pollution prevention by farmers and other nonpoint source polluters. This system is both inefficient and unfair.

Although the Safe Drinking Water Act requires local utilities to provide safe water, it gives them few tools to engage in water pollution prevention and instead emphasizes …

Raisins And Resilience: Elaborating Home's Compensation Analysis With An Eye To Coastal Climate Change Adaptation, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The State of New Jersey, the Borough of Harvey Cedars, and the United States Army Corps of Engineers were all preparing for an event like Hurricane Sandy years before the 2012 super-storm made landfall along the Mid-Atlantic coast. The governments began, for instance, a major dune restoration project in 2005 in order to protect the New Jersey coast from massive storm surges that could destroy homes and businesses. To carry out the effort, the local governments sought to purchase the right to build along the seaward portion of property owners' land, and would then construct roughly twenty-foot-high, thirty-foot-wide dunes. If …

Plain Meaning, Precedent, And Metaphysics: Lessons In Statutory Interpretation From Analyzing The Elements Of The Clean Water Act Offense, Jeffrey G. Miller

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article, the fifth in a series of five, completes the author’s detailed analysis of how federal courts have interpreted each element of the Clean Water Act (CWA) offense. Compiling statistics across the four prior articles, it draws conclusions about statutory interpretation in general, finding that the depth of legal analysis increases with the level of court; that environmentally positive results decrease with the level of court; that courts use only a small number of canons and other interpretive devices; that their uses of interpretive devices change over time; and that interpretive devices are not all outcome-neutral. The author also …

Enhancing The Urban Environment Through Green Infrastructure, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article is adapted from Chapter Seven of John R. Nolon, Protecting the Environment Through Land Use Law: Standing Ground, published by ELI Press. The book describes how localities are responding to new challenges, including the imperative that they adapt to and help mitigate climate change and create sustainable neighborhoods. This Article follows the steady advance in the use of green infrastructure in recent years, and details its value as a strategy for adapting to climate change, bettering air quality, lowering heat stress, creating greater biodiversity, conserving energy, providing ecological services, sequestering carbon, preserving and expanding habitats, enhancing aesthetics, increasing …

Fossil Fuel Abolition: Legal And Social Issues, Karl S. Coplan

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article will examine the practical, ethical, legal, and socio-political implications of fossil fuel abolition. First, the Article will consider the practical, ethical, and legal arguments in favor of fossil fuel abolition. Then, the Article will examine possible legal means and authorities to implement abolition in the United States, as well as potential legal objections to fossil fuel abolition. Finally, the Article will consider legal abolition’s capacity to effect the far-reaching changes in our socioeconomic system that a ban on fossil fuels will entail. The Article also will compare the climate reform movement to other social law reform movements in …

Teaching Substantive Environmental Law And Practice Skills Through Interest Group Role-Playing, Karl S. Coplan

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Most law students take their first introductory course in environmental law during their second year of law school. The traditional first-year curriculum does little to prepare students for the complex statutory and regulatory models for most environmental regulation. Law students at the end of their first year often have had little exposure to statutory interpretation. Further, they often have no exposure to administrative law and regulatory implementation. These students may expect statutes to provide clear statements of rules rather than guidelines for administrative rulemaking. They also tend to view the lawmaking and interpretive process through the traditional lens of congressional …

Zoning Neighborhoods For Resilience: Drivers, Tools And Impacts, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

A new urban design is needed, one that if not climate-determinist, is climate-cognizant. The built environment should be structured and the natural environment must be managed and protected in a way that regards climate forces that if left unchecked will sap the energy, the very existence of the city.7 A new urban design must begin with a statement of clear ends to be achieved, be based upon authoritative scientific, legal and social principles and must be implemented with an understanding of the costs--monetary and socio-political, that are demonstrably justified in the light of the alternatives. The extravagant and pretentious historical …

The Neo-Liberal Turn In Environmental Regulation, Jason J. Czarnezki

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Regulation has taken a neoliberal turn, using market-based mechanisms to achieve social benefits, especially in the context of environmental protection, and promoting information dissemination, labeling, and advertising to influence consumer preferences. Although this turn to neoliberal environmental regulation is well under way, there have been few attempts to manage this new reality. Instead, most commentators simply applaud or criticize the turn. If relying on neoliberal environmental reform (i.e., facing this reality regardless of one’s view of this turn), regulation and checks on these reforms are required. This Article argues that in light of the shift from traditional to neoliberal “substantive” …