Law Commons^™

Not Just Air Pollution: How The Clean Air Act Can Fix Zoning, Transportation, And Afforadable Housing, Nicholas D. Monck

University of Colorado Law Review Forum

The Clean Air Act of 1970 produced a revolution in environmental law. From its unique approach to federalism to its technology forcing provisions, it remains an innovative statute to this day. In light of the growing threat posed by climate change, federal administrators have worked to adapt its text to deal with greenhouse gasses and carbon emissions. Global warming, though, is not the only context in which the Clean Air Act (CAA) can be used in ways not originally intended. Although not meant as an urban planning law, the CAA’s Transportation Control Plans (TCPs) offer an opportunity to promote smarter …

The Use Of Courts To Protect The Environmental Commons, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.

Environmental Justice And The Possibilities For Environmental Law, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

Climate change and extreme inequality combine to cause disproportionate harms to poor communities throughout the world. Further, unequal resource allocation is shot through with the structures of racism and other forms of discrimination. This Essay explores these phenomena in two different places in the United States, and traces law’s role in constructing environmental and economic vulnerability. The Essay then proposes that solutions, if there are any to be had, lie in expanding our notions of what kinds of laws are relevant to achieving environmental justice, and in seeing law as a possible tactic for instigating broader social change but not …

The Statutory Separation Of Powers, Sharon B. Jacobs

Publications

Separation of powers forms the backbone of our constitutional democracy. But it also operates as an underappreciated structural principle in subconstitutional domains. This Article argues that Congress constructs statutory schemes of separation, checks, and balances through its delegations to administrative agencies. Like its constitutional counterpart, the “statutory separation of powers” seeks to prevent the dominance of factions and ensure policy stability. But separating and balancing statutory authority is a delicate business: the optimal balance is difficult to calibrate ex ante, the balance is unstable, and there are risks that executive agencies in particular might seek expansion of their authority vis-à-vis …

Rethinking Public Land Use Planning, Mark Squillace

Publications

The public land use planning process is broken. The land use plans of the principal multiple-use agencies—the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”)—are unnecessarily complex, take too long to complete, monopolize the time and resources of public land management agency staffs, and fail to engage the general public in any meaningful way. Moreover, the end result is too often a plan that is not sufficiently nimble to respond to changing conditions on the ground, a problem that appears to be accelerating due to climate change.

It might seem easy to chalk up these problems to …

Sustainable Development: Energy, Justice, And Women, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

This article will first offer a functional synopsis relevant to its remit, of the concept of sustainable development (SD) embodied in international law and policy that reflects a tension between economic and social claims as contrasted with environmental protection. While the dominant place acquired by the economic and social dimensions of SD will be recognized, it will argue consistent with the predicate of justice discussed in the article, that the protection of the human environment encompasses the plight of the energy poor and their women and children. Second, the article will delineate the contours of one of the great developmental …

Environmental Gentrification, Sarah Fox

University of Colorado Law Review

Gentrification is a term often used, much maligned, and difficult to define. A few general principles can nonetheless be distilled regarding the concept. First, gentrification is spurred by rising desirability of an area for housing or commercial purposes. Second, this rising desirability, following basic supply-and-demand principles, leads to higher property values and rents in an uncontrolled market. Third, gentrification leads to a shift in the demographics of a neighborhood. This shift can change not only the socioeconomic and racial composition of the area but also the community's character, as residential and commercial options begin to reflect the preferences of the …

Reviving The Environmental Justice Potential Of Title Vi Through Heightened Judicial Review, Rachel Calvert

University of Colorado Law Review

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act has unrealized potential to correct the racialized distribution of environmental hazards. The disparate impact regulations implementing this sweeping statute target the institutional discrimination that characterizes environmental injustice. Agency decisions routinely deny claims that federal funds are contributing to projects that disproportionately pollute minority communities, allegedly in violation of Title VI disparate impact regulations. These dismissals are effectively final, as trends in civil rights jurisprudence have essentially foreclosed would-be litigants' opportunities for meaningful judicial review. Their last remaining avenue for recourse is to trigger an arbitrary and capricious review of agency actions, but the …