Law Commons^™

What Can Animal Law Learn From Environmental Law?, Rachel Lamb, Tara Zuardo

Animal Law Review

This Review analyzes and synopsizes What Can Animal Law Learn from Environmental Law?, edited by Professor Randall S. Abate. The book is a compilation of writings by numerous professionals in the fields of animal and environmental law. This Review introduces the background of the book and those sections most relevant to animal law. The book is divided into four distinct units, and this Review addresses each in turn: (1) Introductory Context, (2) U.S. Law Contexts, (3) International and Comparative Law Contexts, and (4) Vision for the Future. This Review ends by illustrating how academic settings can benefit from the use …

Exposed: Asking The Wrong Question In Risk Regulation, Catherine O'Neill

Faculty Articles

Environmental agencies determine the future state of our air, waters, and soil by reference to people’s recent-past practices. Agency exposure assessors inquire “to what are people exposed?”, and then set health-based standards accordingly. That is, they require environmental conditions sufficient to support only people’s contemporary pursuits. This Article observes that this approach suffers from several infirmities, such that exposure assessment as practiced fails to advance – and often undermines – the health-based goals of environmental and other laws. This Article examines the development of exposure assessment at EPA to uncover how agencies’ inquiry came to focus on contemporary behaviors, rather …

The Brave New Path Of Energy Federalism, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

For much of the past 80 years courts have fixated on dual sovereignty as the organizing federalism paradigm under New Deal era energy statutes. Dual sovereignty’s reign emphasized a jurisdictional “bright line,” with a fixed, legalistic boundary between federal and state regulators. This Article explores how recent Supreme Court decisions limit dual sovereignty’s role as the organizing federalism principle under energy statutes.

These recent decisions do not approach federal-state jurisdiction as either/or proposition, but instead recognize it is concurrent in certain contexts. Concurrent jurisdiction opens up a brave new path of possibilities for energy federalism but also has been target …

Traditional Ecological Rulemaking, Anthony Moffa

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the implications of an increased role for Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in United States agency decisionmaking. Specifically, it contemplates where TEK might substantively and procedurally fit and, most importantly, whether a final agency action based on TEK would survive judicial scrutiny. In the midst of a growing body of scholarship questioning the wisdom of deference to agency expertise9 and the legitimacy of the administrative state writ large,10 this Article argues that there remains an important space in administrative rulemaking for the consideration of ways of understanding that differ from traditional Western norms. TEK can and should fill …

Got Guts? The Iconic Streams Of The U.S. Virgin Islands And The Law’S Ephemeral Edge, Jesse Reiblich, Thomas T. Ankersen

UF Law Faculty Publications

The legal status of “guts” — the ephemeral streams of the U.S. Virgin Islands that typically flow only after rainfall — is uncertain. Furthermore, it is unclear what, if any, property interest the Government of the Virgin Islands, and the public, have in these watercourses. This uncertainty stems from the non-navigable nature of guts, and is compounded by the Virgin Islands’ unique legal system, a legal system that recognizes at least some Danish law from its colonial past, and has seemingly inconsistent provisions purporting to confer legal and regulatory interests in these guts to the Government of the Virgin Islands. …

The Work Of The Department Of Justice Environment And Natural Resources Division: Promoting Environmental Rule Of Law And The Advancement Of Sustainable Development Goals, John C, Cruden

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

No abstract provided.

America's Invaders: The Nile Monitor And The Ineffectiveness Of The Reactive Response To Invasive Species, William K. Norvell Iii

Animal Law Review

In response to an ever increasing level of environmental devastation caused by invasive species and the resultant concerns for ecological preservation, both the state and federal governments have passed legislation to combat this pressing issue. In this Note, the author evaluates the effectiveness of these reactive and proactive policies in the United States. The author also analyzes the successful, proactive invasive species legislation from Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, and then contrasts them to the failing, mainly reactive laws found in the United States. Despite these shortcomings, the author concludes that it is entirely possible for the United …

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 …

Environmental Regulation Going Retro: Learning Foresight From Hindsight, Jonathan B. Wiener, Daniel L. Ribeiro

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Presidential Memorandum On Mitigation, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

On November 3, 2015, President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum aimed at unifying the mitigation practice and policy for activities carried out and approved by the Departments of Defense, Interior, and Agriculture, the EPA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration... See Mitigating Impacts on Natural Resources from Development and Encouraging Related Private Investment, 80 Fed. Reg. 68743 (Nov. 6, 2015). The broad policy goal of the Memorandum is to ensure that the agencies mitigation policies are clear, work similarly across agencies, and are implemented consistently within agencies. Id. at 68743. The Memorandum also emphasizes the need for transparency, measurable …

The Promise Of The Rule Of (Environmental) Law: A Reply To Pardy’S Unbearable Licence, Jocelyn Stacey

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This short reply clarifies and defends the argument presented in “The Environmental Emergency and the Legality of Discretion in Environmental Law.” It responds to the arguments that were made, and that could have been made, in Pardy’s critique “An Unbearable Licence.” The reply further develops the public-justification conception of the rule of law, arguing that it is at home within Canadian public law. It also argues that this conception of the rule of law highlights possibilities for future research directions in Canadian environmental law.

Environmental Law, Big Data, And The Torrent Of Singularities, William Boyd

Publications

How will big data impact environmental law in the near future? This Essay imagines one possible future for environmental law in 2030 that focuses on the implications of big data for the protection of public health from risks associated with pollution and industrial chemicals. It assumes the perspective of an historian looking back from the end of the twenty-first century at the evolution of environmental law during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The premise of the Essay is that big data will drive a major shift in the underlying knowledge practices of environmental law (along with other areas …

Environmental Law: The Role Of Congress In Environmental Law, Steven Colloton, David Schoenbrod, Eric Claeys, Matt Leggett, Nicholas Robinson

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.