Law Commons^™

Challenges And Opportunities Of A Forthcoming Strategic Assessment Of The Implications Of International Climate Change Mitigation Commitments For Individual Undertakings In Canada, Robert B. Gibson, Karine Péloffy, Meinhard Doelle

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Canada is preparing to initiate a challenging, but potentially ground-breaking, strategic assessment on the implications of its climate change mitigation commitments for project assessments. The strategic assessment is immediately needed to provide project-level guidance for decision makers who will be required under new federal legislation to consider the extent to which each assessed project “contributes to sustainability” and “hinders or contributes to” meeting Canada’s climate commitments. However, Canada, like many other countries, has not yet translated its Paris Agreementclimate commitments into an adequate suite of specific policies, pathways, budgets, and other directives for compliance. Consequently, the climate commitments’ strategic assessment …

Law School News: Does Indictment Mean Correia Will Likely Be Forced To Resign? Law School Dean Says 'Wait A Week' 10/17/2018, Michael Holtzman, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Highway Culverts, Salmon Runs, And The Stevens Treaties: A Century Of Litigating Pacific Northwest Tribal Fishing Rights, Ryan Hickey

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Isaac Stevens, then Superintendent of Indian Affairs and Governor of Washington Territory, negotiated a series of treaties with Indian tribes in the Pacific Northwest during 1854 and 1855. A century and a half later in 2001, the United States joined 21 Indian tribes in filing a Request for Determination in the United States District Court for the District of Washington. Plaintiffs alleged the State of Washington had violated those 150-year-old treaties, which remained in effect, by building and maintaining culverts under roads that prevented salmon passage. This litigation eventually reached the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which held in favor …

Collaboration Through Nepa: Achieving A Social License To Operate On Federal Public Lands, Temple Stoellinger, L. Steven Smutko, Jessica M. Western

Public Land & Resources Law Review

As demand and consumption of natural gas increases, so will drilling operations to extract the natural gas on federal public lands. Fueled by the shale gas revolution, natural gas drilling operations are now frequently taking place, not only in the highly documented urban settings, but also on federal public lands with high conservation value. The phenomenon of increased drilling in sensitive locations, both urban and remote, has sparked increased public opposition, requiring oil and gas producers to reconsider how they engage the public. Oil and gas producers have increasingly deployed the concept of a social license to operate to gain …

Public-Private Conservation Agreements And The Greater Sage-Grouse, Justin R. Pidot

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In 2015, the Obama Administration announced its conservation plans for the greater sage-grouse, an iconic bird of the intermountain west.Political leadership at the time described those plans as the “largest landscape-level conservation effort in U.S. history,”and they served as the foundation for a decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”) that a listing of the bird was not warranted under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”). The Trump Administration appears poised to substantially amend the plans, although an array of interested parties have urged that the plans be left intact. Regardless of the outcome of this debate, conservation of …

Streamlining The Production Of Clean Energy: Proposals To Reform The Hydroelectricity Licensing Process, Travis Kavulla, Laura Farkas

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Hydroelectric power is an efficient and clean source of power. In an era when air emissions dominate public concern about the environmental effects of the energy sector, it is a paradox that among the most highly regulated energy projects are hydroelectric dams, which do not combust fuel. This is partly due to a failure of successive statutory enactments,which have transformed hydroelectric licensing from a regulatory “one-stop shop” with a single regulator, to a process chained to a bewilderingnumber of often conflicting regulatory agencies, often riven with delay. Hydroelectric licensing has also failed because its capacious standard of review encourages special-interest …

Keeping Power In Charge: Federal Hydropower And The Downstream Environment, Reed D. Benson

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Building The New American Economy: Smart, Fair, And Sustainable By Jeffrey D. Sachs, Serena R. Wheaton

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Eating The Ocean By Elspeth Probyn, Annie Brethour

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Three Alternatives For Managing Free-Roaming Horses And Burros: A Legal Reform, C.J. Michaels

Natural Resources Journal

The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act is overdue for repeal or revision. The Wild Horse and Burro Program is expensive for taxpayers, detrimental to rangelands, and harmful to the thousands of free-roaming equines it is intended to benefit. For nearly half a century, the Bureau of Land Management and United States Forest Service have struggled to balance the mandates of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act amidst a political and social climate that makes compliance impossible. Forty-six years after the Act was passed, the agencies are further from arriving at a solution than they have ever been. The …

Fair And Equitable Treatment Of Foreign Investors In An Era Of Sustainable Development, Ying Zhu

Natural Resources Journal

The long-existing debate surrounding the environmental impacts of investment liberalism has been intensified by the rapid growth of an international investment regime, which now consists of more than 3,000 international investment agreements (“IIAs”) and more than 700 investor-state arbitration cases. Many scholars, states, and non-governmental organizations (“NGOs”) fear this effective investment protection regime may intrude on or “chill” the host state’s sovereign right to regulate public interests, including environmental protection. An unsolved task for arbitral tribunals is to distinguish non-compensable legitimate environmental regulation from regulatory conduct that triggers compensation paid by host states to foreign investors.

Lockett Symposium: Is The Supreme Court's Command On Mitigating Circumstances A Spoonful Of Sugar With A Poison Pill For The Death Penalty?, Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier

ConLawNOW

This Article addresses how Lockett v. Ohio and the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on mitigating factors in capital cases established a more humane death penalty while at the same time undermining the death penalty system. The Court’s emphasis on the constitutional importance of individualized sentencing has, in effect, helped return the U.S. death penalty system to an unconstitutional arbitrary and discriminatory system.

After the U.S. Supreme Court effectively struck down the existing death penalty statutes in 1972, state legislatures responded with new statutes designed to try to make a fairer and less arbitrary death penalty. When the Supreme Court reviewed these …

Lockett Symposium: Lockett V. Ohio And The Rise Of Mitigation Specialists, Russell Stetler

ConLawNOW

This article discusses the impact of Lockett in terms of the rise of mitigation specialists—the capital defense team members from a variety of multidisciplinary backgrounds whose dedicated function is to investigate the social history of the client in order to facilitate an outcome that avoids execution. In Part I, the article discusses how Lockett ended the confusion that resulted from the Supreme Court’s prior death penalty decisions in the 1970s. In Part II, the article examines the emergence of mitigation investigation as a central obligation of capital defense in response to Lockett, and the diverse career paths that led …

Lockett Symposium: Justice White's Lockett Concurrence And The Evolving Standards For A Capital Defendant's Mens Rea, Jordan Berman

ConLawNOW

In Lockett v. Ohio, Justice Byron White authored a separate concurring opinion specifically to assert that capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment when imposed absent “a finding that the defendant possessed a purpose to cause the death of the victim.” This view was largely vindicated when Justice White authored the opinions in Enmund v. Florida and Cabana v. Bullock, in which the Court held that the death sentence could not constitutionally be imposed on one who did not kill or attempt to kill or have any intention of participating in or facilitating a killing. Nonetheless, just one year …

Lockett Symposium: Reflections On The Sandra Lockett Case, Peggy Cooper Davis

ConLawNOW

Professor Davis, who was one of the lawyers handling Sandra Lockett’s Supreme Court case, describes Ms. Lockett's courage under threat of execution and explains why principles of respect for human dignity should have forbidden placing her in that horrifying position.

Lockett Symposium: The Other Lockett, Dennis Balske

ConLawNOW

Sandra’s case was perfect for the New York Times. James’s makes for choice tabloid reading.

Few people realize that two Locketts were involved in the famous Lockett case–Sandra and her brother, James. Sandra is famous because she is the Lockett in the United States Supreme Court decision. James is unknown because the Ohio Supreme Court remanded his case to Akron for a new trial.

Sandra lost her direct appeal in the Ohio Supreme Court. Eventually the United States Supreme Court granted review and reached its all-important decision striking down Ohio’s death penalty statute and mandating that capital defendants be permitted …

Language Matters: Environmental Controversy And The Quest For Common Ground, Scott Slovic

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

"Smart Contracts" & Legal Enforceability, Aaron Wright, Priyanka Desai, Freeman Lewin, Benjamin L. Van Adrichem

Blockchain Project Reports

Thousands of years ago, written contracts first appeared in Mesopotamia, with small cuneiform triangles hammered into clay tablets. These contracts were fairly sophisticated, memorializing basic credit agreements, partnership arrangements, as well as labor, sales, and rental agreements.1 Since these first recorded contracts, the tools used to create written contracts have undergone considerable change. We no longer enter into agreements memorialized in clay; paper and more recently electronic agreements serve as the primary medium for the expression of commercial arrangements.

Many argue that blockchains could foster an evolution in how legal agreements are created and executed, supporting a new generation of …

October 16, 2018: Pittsburgh Foundation Grant, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Pittsburgh Foundation Grant“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Suntrust Banks, Inc. Et Al., Order On Movant Insurers' Motions Related To Suntrust's Bad Faith Claim (Count Ix), John J. Goger

Superior Court of Fulton County: Metro Atlanta Business Case Division Opinions

No abstract provided.

The Continuing Battle Over Net Neutrality, Mike Crawford

SLU Law Journal Online

In this article, Mike Crawford discusses how net neutrality continues to be a heated debate about who has the right and ability to create laws that will impact the way information on the Internet is viewed.

Counterfeit Campaign Speech, Rebecca Green

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

At Oral Argument, Supreme Court Weighs Immigrant Detention, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Incentive Benefits And Costs, Timothy J. Bartik

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Time-Barring Of Passenger Claims Under The Contract Of Carriage Of Passengers By Rail, Dorota Ambrożuk

internetowy Kwartalnik Antymonopolowy i Regulacyjny (internet Quarterly on Antitrust and Regulation)

The contract of carriage of passengers by rail is governed by EU law, as well as national and international law, which shall apply to both national and international transport operations. This raises a question, inter alia, about the correct application of the rules on time-barring passenger claims against carriers. In principle, this is not regulated by EU law. However, EU law largely incorporates the CIV Convention, which regulates the limitation periods for claims. Part of passenger claims is directly covered by the CIV Convention; there is no doubt that the provisions of the convention should apply to them. On the …

The Commission Implementing Regulation (Eu) 2017/2177 Of 22 November 2017 On Access To Service Facilities And Rail-Related Services – Step In Making The Rail Transport Sector More Competitive?, Anna Kutyłowska

internetowy Kwartalnik Antymonopolowy i Regulacyjny (internet Quarterly on Antitrust and Regulation)

The importance of providing railway undertakings with access to service facilities was indicated during the work on Directive 2012/34/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 November 2012 establishing a Single European Railway Area (recast) (Journal of Laws EU L 343, 14.12.2012, p. 32, as amended). At that time, it was emphasized that in many cases the lack of access to service facilities on non-discriminatory terms for new participants leads to high barriers to market entry. The adoption of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/2177 of 22 November 2017 on access to service facilities and rail-related services (Journal …

Agreements Between Airports And Carriers In The Light Of Eu Competition Law, Jakub Kociubiński

internetowy Kwartalnik Antymonopolowy i Regulacyjny (internet Quarterly on Antitrust and Regulation)

Agreements between airports and carriers, similarly to all vertical agreements, can cause harm to the market, primarily when the balance between the undertakings concerned is disturbed and dependence emerges. In air transport, such relationships have been considered largely through the lens of State aid law, since the subsidization of airports makes its activities imputable to the State. Recourse to competition law – namely Articles 101 and 102 TFEU – should be perceived as an alternative, required in the light of the gradual withdrawal of State funding for airport operations. This paper provides an overview of the anticompetitive mechanism highlighted above, …

Passenger Tariffs In Regional Railway Transportation In Poland: Status Quo, Implications For Passengers, Proposals Of Changes, Przemysław Kowalik

internetowy Kwartalnik Antymonopolowy i Regulacyjny (internet Quarterly on Antitrust and Regulation)

Regional railway transportation in Poland in the second decade of the 21st century is characterized by a remarkable complexity of tariff solutions. This is primarily caused by the existence of many train operators with their own tariff systems as well as ‘territorially restricted’ tariffs applied by one or more operators. The above status quo may greatly affect the decisions of passengers regarding their railway journeys. The first issue connected with those decisions results from the often complicated rules of cross-operator ticket acceptance (unilateral, bilateral, sale channeldependent, none). Another issue lies in perceived discrimination in access to tariff information and sale …

Satisfaction Of Users Of Railway Stations – Research Perspective, Mirosław Antonowicz, Monika Kicińska-Jezierska, Patrycja Lejk

internetowy Kwartalnik Antymonopolowy i Regulacyjny (internet Quarterly on Antitrust and Regulation)

In this article the Authors present the issue of social research as an example of processes which make it possible to measure standards based on both internal and external regulations. Knowledge accumulation following recurrent or complementary research allows an organisation to take an advisory role during legislative processes on various levels. The Authors indicate critical stages of the research methodology forming, and describe examples of satisfaction tracking and mystery shopper research which play a central role for competitiveness on contemporary markets.

Drones – Future Of Aviation And Legislative Challenge. Some Remarks On New Eu Legislation Concerning Unmanned Aircrafts, Mateusz Osiecki

internetowy Kwartalnik Antymonopolowy i Regulacyjny (internet Quarterly on Antitrust and Regulation)

The dynamic development of civil aviation in recent years is symbolised by the growing popularity of unmanned aircrafts commonly known as ‘drones’. A sudden increase of interest in these devices, also among European Union citizens, became a trigger for the introduction of safety regulations concerning the design, production, maintenance and operations of drones. After long debates and preparations, the European Parliament and the Council have finally adopted a relevant legal act, namely Regulation 2018/1139 of 4th July 2018 that entered into force on 11th September 2018. This article is an attempt to assess the new legal measures against the needs …