When Does Legal Flexibility Work In Environmental Law, Eric Biber, Josh Eagle

Josh Eagle

When Does Legal Flexibility Work In Environmental Law, Eric Biber, Josh Eagle

Eric Biber

Strategic Institutional Positioning: How We Have Come To Generate Environmental Law Without Congress, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Droughts, Floods, And Wildfires: Paleo Perspectives On Diaster Law In The Anthropocene, Ryan Stoa

Ryan B. Stoa

Humanity's impact on the earth has become so pronounced that momentum is building toward adopting a new term for the modem geological age-the "Anthropocene." The term signifies that human activity has reached a scale that it is now a planetary force capable of shaping ecosystems and natural processes. And yet, anthropocentric natural resources management and environmental lawmaking in the United States reveal a lack of control in managing natural systems and fostering resilience to extreme events. These systems do not easily conform to the whims of reactionary environmental policies. Droughts, floods, and wildfires, in particular are often conceptualized as unforeseeable …

The "Right" Right To Environmental Protection: What We Can Discern From The American And Indian Constitutional Experience, Deepa Badrinarayana

Deepa Badrinarayana

California Climate Law---Model Or Object Lesson?, Daniel A. Farber

Daniel A Farber

In the invitation to this Symposium on Reconceptualizing the Future of Environmental Law, the organizers explained that the Symposium “focuses on the continued expansion of environmental law into distinct areas of the law, requiring an increasingly multidisciplinary approach beyond that of traditional federal regulation.” In short, the question posed is about the future proliferation of environmental measures outside the previous domains of federal environmental statutes. At the risk of being guilty of local parochialism, I would like to discuss how the future described by the organizers has already arrived in California--both in the sense that a great deal is happening …

The Commander In Chief's Authority To Combat Climate Change, Mark P. Nevitt

Mark P Nevitt

Climate change is the world’s greatest environmental threat. And it is increasingly understood as a threat to domestic and international peace and security. In recognition of this threat, the President has taken the initiative to prepare for climate change’s impact – in some cases drawing sharp objections from Congress. While both the President and Congress have certain constitutional authorities to address the national security threat posed by climate change, the precise contours of their overlapping powers are unclear. As Commander in Chief, the President has the constitutional authority to repel sudden attacks and take care that the laws are faithfully …

Antimonopoly In Public Land Law, Michael Blumm, Kara Tebeau

Michael Blumm

Public land law is often thought to be divided into historical eras like the Disposition Era, the Reservation Era, and the Modern Era. We think an overarching theme throughout all eras is antimonopoly. Since the Founding, and continuing for over two-and-a-quarter centuries into the 21^st century, antimonopoly policy has permeated public land law. In this article we show the persistence of antimonopoly sentiment throughout the public land history, from the Confederation Congress to Jacksonian America to the Progressive Conservation Era and into the modern era.

Antimonopoly policy led to widespread ownership of American land, perhaps America’s chief distinction from …

What The Frack? How Weak Industrial Disclosure Rules Prevent Public Understanding Of Chemical Practices And Toxic Politics, Benjamin W. Cramer

Benjamin W. Cramer

Hydraulic fracturing, known colloquially as “fracking,” makes use of chemically-formulated fluid that is forced down a gas well at great pressure to fracture underground rock formations and release embedded natural gas. Many journalists, environmentalists, and public health advocates are concerned about what may happen if the fracking fluid escapes the well and contaminates nearby drinking water supplies. This article attempts a comprehensive analysis and comparison of all relevant fracking fluid disclosure regulations currently extant in the United States, and considers whether the information gained is truly useful for citizens, journalists, and regulators. In recent years the federal government and several …

Exalting The Corporate Form Over Environmental Protection The Corporate Shell Game And The Enforcement Of Water Management Law In Florida, Mary Jane Angelo, Charles Lobdell, Tara Boonstra

Mary Jane Angelo

Current laws in Florida afford substantial protection to the “people behind the corporations” (corporate principals) and generally do not allow environmental permitting agencies such as the water management districts to consider such people in their permitting or enforcement efforts. This article poses the question “Do existing corporate law principles of limited liability defeat the important public policy of water resource protection in Florida?” First, in Parts II and III, this article introduces the problem and provides an overview of Florida water management district permitting and enforcement authorities and processes. Next, in Part IV, this article explores the existing legal authorities …

Shared Sovereignty: The Role Of Expert Agencies In Environmental Law, Michael Blumm, Andrea Lang

Michael Blumm

Environmental law usually features statutory interpretation or administrative interpretation by a single agency. Less frequent is a close look at the mechanics of implementing environmental policy across agency lines. In this article, we offer such a look: a comparative analysis of five statutes and their approaches to sharing decision-making authority among more than one federal agency. We call this pluralistic approach to administrative decisionmaking “shared sovereignty.”

In this analysis, we compare implementation of the National Environmental Policy, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Federal Power Act. All of these statutes incorporate …

Vetoing Wetland Permits Under Section 404(C) Of The Clean Water Act: A History Of Inter-Federal Agency Controversy And Reform, Michael Blumm, Elisabeth D. Mering

Michael Blumm

For most of its four-decade history, section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act could have been considered to be a sleeper provision of environmental law. The proviso authorizes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) overrule permits for discharges of dredged or fill material issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) where necessary to ensure protection of fish and wildlife habitat, municipal water supplies, and recreational areas against unacceptable adverse effects. This authority of one federal agency to veto the decisions of another federal agency is quite unusual, perhaps unprecedented in environmental law. The exceptional nature of section 404(c) …

Deployment Of Geoengineering By The Private And Public Sector: Can The Risks Of Geoengineering Ever Be Effectively Regulated?, Daniela E. Lai

Daniela E Lai

Geoengineering has been described as any large-scale environmental manipulation designed with the purpose of mitigating the effects of climate change without decreasing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Currently there are no specific rules regulating geoengineering activities particularly if geoengineering is deployed in areas beyond national jurisdiction. This article argues that, in order to mitigate the risks of geoengineering, there needs to be effective regulation of its deployment both in international and domestic law. The risks of geoengineering can only be effectively regulated if there is international cooperation between all levels of governments and private individuals involved in the research and development …

Robinson Township V. Commonwealth Of Pennsylvania: Examination And Implications, John Dernbach, James May, Kenneth Kristl

Kenneth T Kristl

In Robinson Township v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held unconstitutional major parts of Pennsylvania’s “Act 13”—a 2012 oil and gas law designed to facilitate the development of natural gas from Marcellus Shale. In so doing, the Court breathed new life into Article I, Section 27 of Pennsylvania’s constitution, which creates public rights in certain environmental amenities and requires the state to “conserve and maintain” public resources “for the benefit of all the people.” This paper describes the decision, explains some of its immediate implications in Pennsylvania, and also explains its importance for public environmental rights and environmental …

Economics-Based Environmentalism In The Fourth Generation Of Environmental Law, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Environmental protection and economic concerns are not mutually exclusive. This article explores some of the issues of economic analysis that might arise as we approach the fourth generation of environmental law. It explains ways that economic analysis can be employed to generate the best environmental rules, including measures under what this article terms as "economics-based environmentalism." Economics-based environmentalism contends that the advantages of using economic principles within a “polycentric toolbox” of environmental law come from the benefits available in private ordering, markets, property rights, liability regimes and incentives structures that will better protect the environment than alternatives like state-based interventionist, …

Protecting A Natural Resource Legacy While Promoting Reslience: Can It Be Done?, Alyson C. Flournoy

Alyson Flournoy

Our stock of natural resources, and the values and services they provide, are diminishing steadily over time. We have dozens of laws, enacted over a period of almost forty years that express the objective of stemming this tide. Yet, the inexorable, incremental loss continues. Scholars concerned with conservation of our natural capital have long wrestled with how best to improve the laws we have in place and to supplement the framework of existing law with newer approaches. One common theme in efforts to design progressive conservation law is how to better incorporate scientific insights into our legal regimes. This effort …

Harnessing The Power Of Information To Protect Our Public Natural Resource Legacy, Alyson Flournoy, Heather Halter, Christina Storz

Alyson Flournoy

In practice, our laws have proven unequal to the lofty objectives of preserving a legacy of public natural resources for our children or achieving sustainable use of these resources. There are many factors that contribute to this shortfall, but inherent inadequacies in the design of these statutes cannot be overlooked as an important determinant. Despite the statutes' broadly stated aspirations toward sustainability and protection of the interests of future generations, only a handful of these statutes include strong and enforceable mandates for sustainable resource use. Many of these statutes accord natural resource-management agencies broad discretion to balance and permit a …

Constitutional Limitations On Sovereignty, 2014 Edition, Garrett Power

Garrett Power

This electronic book is published in a searchable PDF format as a part of the E-scholarship Repository of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. It is an “open content” casebook intended for classroom use in courses in Constitutional Law, Land Use Control, and Environmental Law. It consists of 130 odd judicial opinions (most rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court) carefully selected from the two hundred years of American constitutional history which address the clash between public sovereignty and private property. The text considers both the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property.

The …

Anti-Waste, Michael Pappas

Michael Pappas

It may be a bad idea to waste resources, but is it illegal? Legally speaking, what does “waste” even mean? Though the concept may appear completely subjective, this Article builds a framework for understanding how the law identifies and addresses waste. Drawing upon property and natural resource doctrines, the Article finds that the law selects from a menu of five specific, and sometimes competing, societal values to define waste. The values are: 1) economic efficiency, 2) human flourishing, 3) concern for future generations, 4) stability and consistency, and 5) ecological concerns. The law recognizes waste in terms of one or …

C(R)Ap And Trade: The Brave New World Of Non-Point Source Nutrient Trading And Using Lessons From Greenhouse Gas Markets To Make It Work, Victor B. Flatt

Victor B Flatt

After several decades of improvement, water quality in the United States is getting worse, and the problem is primarily caused by run-off from non-point sources, such as farms and urban development. These non-point sources have never had regulatory mandates in the Clean Water Act, and have proven very difficult to control. With little likelihood of comprehensive statutory changes, the EPA and the states that administer the Clean Water Act have looked to other regulatory means to address this problem. One of the most prominent has been the use of markets in pollution (particularly for nutrient pollution from run-off) to provide …

An Economic Approach To Collective Rights And Their Means Of Supply: The Case Of Right To "The Enjoyment Of A Healthy Environment" And The Right To "Rational Management And Use Of Natural Resources" [En Español], Daniel A. Monroy

Daniel A Monroy C

This paper has two main objectives (i) Demonstrate that the defining characteristic of collective rights related to non-excludable of the benefits derived from the "means" of supply and the material "objects" of rights, is consistent with the microeconomic defining characteristic of so-called "public goods" and "commons " (together we call these as non-excludable resources). On the other hand, (ii) Demonstrate that when we analyze the collective rights as non-excludable resources this aims important omitted challenges by traditional legal doctrine related with the adequate supply of collective rights, this happens because the problems of the -Olsonian- logic of collective action. For …

Disaster Law And Policy, Daniel Farber, Jim Chen, Robert Verchick, Lisa Grow Sun

Daniel A Farber

The Birth, Death, And Afterlife Of The Wild Lands Policy: The Evolution Of The Bureau Of Land Management’S Authority To Protect Wilderness Values, Olivia Brumfield

Michael Blumm

Since the enactment of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) in 1976, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has had a troubled relationship with wild lands, the nation’s last remaining places with wilderness characteristics. Although for twenty-five years BLM recognized wilderness values as a resource it must balance and could protect consistent with the agency’s multiple use mandate, in 2003 BLM largely disclaimed that interpretation, potentially imperiling future protection of wild lands that were not designated as wilderness or wilderness study areas. Since then, the agency has made incremental – but potentially powerful – steps toward reclaiming a …

Antimonopoly And The Radical Lochean Origins Of Western Water Law, Michael Blumm

Michael Blumm

This review of David Schorr's book, The Colorado Doctrine: Water Rights, Corporations, and Distributive Justice on the American Frontier, maintains that the book is a therapeutic corrective to the standard history of the origins of western water law as celebration of economic efficiency and wealth maximization. Schorr's account convincingly contends that the roots of prior appropriation water law--the "Colorado Doctrine"--lie in distributional justice concerns, not in the supposed efficiency advantages of private property over common property. The goals of the founders of the Colorado doctrine, according to Schorr, were to advance Radical Lochean principles such as widespread distibution of water …

Constitutional Limitations On Land Use Controls, Environmental Regulations And Governmental Exactions, 2013 Edition, Garrett Power

Garrett Power

This electronic book is published in a searchable PDF format as a part of the E-scholarship Repository of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. It is an “open content” casebook intended for classroom use in courses in Constitutional Law, Land Use Control, and Environmental Law and. It consists of 130 odd judicial opinions (most rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court) carefully selected from the two hundred years of American constitutional history which address the clash between public sovereignty and private property. The text considers both the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property. …

The Implementation Gap: What Causes Laws To Succeed Or Fail?, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

It is important to go behind the “paper systems” many countries and private sector actors have created to manufacture the appearance of commitments to responsible economic activity, environmental protection and social justice. This produces the need to penetrate the veils that mask governments’ “apparent compliance” with the terms of sustainable development, and to be honest about the inability of voluntary codes of practice to shape the behavior of business and government. Implementation requires effective systems to carry out the law and policy mandates. Laws and policies are often poorly designed or deliberately sabotaged in their creation, but in many instances …

The Reality Of Business And Governmental Decision-Making In The Context Of Sustainable Development, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

It is absolutely rational for economic actors and decision-makers to seek to operate in their own self-interest. The challenge for anyone who wishes to influence or alter the process lies in knowing where that self-interest lies and changing the nature of the self-interest if that is required or possible. That is a far greater challenge than many understand because regardless of what we might like to do in our personal lives, it is the institution within which we work that dictates how we think and what we value in our service to that institution. Given the short time frame within …

New “Architecture” And Revitalizing The Un Global Compact, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

Some advocates of sustainable development possess an almost theological faith in what I refer to as “rhetorical” sustainable development as the path to providing for the sound future of human civilizations and critical ecological systems. Simply put, if we try to think “too big” and “bite off too much” then the system we are trying to control or influence consumes us and our resources and we fail miserably. There is real and predictable danger in grandeur. This means we need to think about achieving sustainability in very specific and concrete terms applied to clear goals and an honest understanding of …

Corn, Carbon, And Conservation: Rethinking U.S. Agricultural Policy In A Changing Global Environment, Mary Jane Angelo

Mary Jane Angelo

This Article explores a range of issues related to both the regulatory and incentive-based federal programs that affect the crops we grow, the manner in which they are grown, and the human and environmental impacts of such programs. The Article evaluates the 2008 Farm Bill and describes how the policies contained in it influence virtually every aspect of agriculture, from the decision to grow certain crops, the amount of crops grown, the industrial manner. This Article focuses on one particular commodity, corn, which while ubiquitous and seemingly pedestrian, is perhaps one of the major environmental offenders, and for which the …

The Transatlantic Gmo Dispute Against The European Communities: Some Preliminary Thoughts, David A. Wirth

David A. Wirth

Any day now, a World Trade Organization panel is expected to rule in a dispute between the U.S. and the EU concerning market access for genetically-engineered foods and crops. This piece, written before the release of the WTO panel's report, analyzes novel systemic issues concerning the impact of WTO law on regulatory design, at both the national and international levels, that are raised by this dispute. These include (1) the application of WTO disciplines to regulatory schemes that require prior governmental approval to protect the environment and public health from newly-introduced products and substances; (2) the role of precaution as …