Administrative Law Commons^™

The Brand-X Effect: Declining Chevron Deference In The 21st Century, Stephen Johnson

Articles

Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. is the most frequently cited Supreme Court administrative law decision and has generated substantial scholarship over the past thirty-four ears. Almost three decades ago, Robert Glicksman and Christopher Schroeder examined the nature of judicial review of the actions of the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") by the federal courts during the agency's first twenty years of existence, focusing, in part, on the changing nature of that review in light of the Chevron decision. Glicksman and Schroeder concluded that the courts aggressively reviewed EPA's actions during the agency's early years, interpreting the …

The Missing Element Of Environmental Cost-Benefit Analysis: Compensation For The Loss Of Regulatory Benefits, Karl S. Coplan

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Despite its critics, cost-benefit analysis remains a fixture of the environmental regulation calculus. Most criticisms of cost-benefit analysis focus on the impossibility of monetizing environmental and health amenities protected by regulations. Less attention has been paid to the regressive wealth-transfer effects of regulations foregone based on cost-benefit analysis. This regressive effect occurs as long as downwind communities that suffer health and harms from environmental contamination are generally less wealthy than the owners of pollution sources that avoid regulatory-compliance costs. The availability of compensation to pollution-victims has the potential to ameliorate this regressive effect. This Article recommends that the availability of …

Food, Fracking, And Folly, Melissa Mortazavi

Faculty Articles

Few industries in the United States carry the clout and capital of the oil and gas and agricultural sectors. Economic behemoths, their booms and busts shape the destinies of states, define national policy, and secure the life or death of small towns across the United States. Like it or not, the agriculture and oil and gas industries have strong lobbies and vehement and mobilized constituencies. Recent years have seen both sectors facing public push-back on modern trends in extraction, growth, and methods of production. In response to these developments, these industries have used their considerable political capital to seek new …

Indeconstructible: The Triumph Of The Environmental “Administrative State”, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

Shortly after the 2017 Presidential inauguration, a senior advisor to the President proclaimed that a top priority of the Administration would be the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” A primary target of the Administration’s deconstruction efforts was the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) and federal environmental regulations.

While the President can use a variety of tools, including the appointment power, budget power, treaty power, and executive orders, to influence the manner in which the EPA and other agencies interpret and enforce laws, the President has very little power to unilaterally “deconstruct the administrative state.” The “administrative state” is a creation …

Taking The Public Out Of Public Lands: Shifts In Coal-Extraction Policies In The Trump Administration, Jessica Owley

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Come Hell And High Water: Climate Change Policy In The Age Of Trump, Brigham Daniels

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Climate Tort Federalism, Tracy Hester

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Protecting The Environment In An Era Of Federal Retreat: The View From New York City, Rebecca Bratspies

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Grid And The Grouse: Cooperative Federal-State Conservation Planning In The Ages Of Obama And Trump, Bret Birdsong

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Many Sins Of Nepa, Richard A. Epstein

Texas A&M Law Review

Forthcoming

Regulatory Cooperation In International Trade And Its Transformative Effects On Executive Power, Elizabeth Trujillo

Faculty Scholarship

As international trade receives the brunt of local discontent with globalization trends and recent changes by the Trump administration have put into question the viability of such trade arrangements moving forward, there has been a clear trend in using international trade fora for managing regulatory barriers on economic development. This paper will discuss this recent trend in international trade toward increased regulatory cooperation through the creation of formalized transnational regulatory bodies, such as the U.S.-EU Regulatory Cooperation Body that was being discussed in the TTIP negotiations and comparable ones in the Canadian-EU Trade Agreement as well as U.S.-Mexico and U.S.- …

Mays V. City Of Flint, Michigan, Nathan A. Burke

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In Mays v. City of Flint Michigan, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality employees removed a class action against them in the Michigan state court to federal court under the federal-officer removal statute. This court ruled in favor of the residents of Flint, determining that the federal officer removal statute did not give the federal court jurisdiction over a state agency simply because the agency must follow federal rules. The court held that Michigan Department of Environmental Quality employees could not have been “acting under” the federal government even though the state agency’s enforcement authority could be trumped by the …

United States V. Osage Wind, Llc, Summer Carmack

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The Osage Nation, as owner of the beneficial interest in its mineral estate, issues federally-approved leases to persons and entities who wish to conduct mineral development on its lands. After an energy-development company, Osage Wind, leased privately-owned surface lands within Tribal reservation boundaries and began to excavate minerals for purposes of constructing a wind farm, the United States brought suit on the Tribe’s behalf. In the ensuing litigation, the Osage Nation insisted that Osage Wind should have obtained a mineral lease from the Tribe before beginning its work. In its decision, the Tenth Circuit applied one of the Indian law …

Opening The Gates Of Cow Palace: Regulating Runoff Manure As A Hazardous Waste Under Rcra, Reed J. Mccalib

Michigan Law Review

In 2015, a federal court held for the first time that the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) may regulate runoff manure as a “solid waste” under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”). The holding of Community Ass’n for Restoration of the Environment, Inc. v. Cow Palace, LLC opened the gates to regulation of farms under the nation’s primary toxic waste statute. This Comment argues that, once classified as a “solid waste,” runoff manure fits RCRA’s definition of “hazardous waste” as well. This reclassification would expand EPA’s authority to monitor and respond to the nation’s tragically common groundwater-contamination emergencies.

Clean Air Council V. Pruitt, Oliver Wood

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia granted a motion for summary vacatur against the Environmental Protection Agency after environmental groups challenged the agency’s reconsideration of the Obama-era methane rule under the Clean Air Act. The court held that the EPA unlawfully issued a stay after it reconsidered the rule without proper authorization. The court vacated the EPA’s stay, one example of the Trump Administration unsuccessfully repealing Obama-era rulemaking.

Technology-Based? Cost Factoring In U.S. Environmental Standards, Jamison E. Colburn

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Environmental controls in the United States are often said to be “technology-based” because the polluter’s duties are determined by the available technology for controlling that pollution rather than by the social costs and benefits of doing so. Indeed, this is much of what distinguishes U.S. environmental law post-1970 from that which preceded it. But technology-based standards have in fact weighed the costs of controlling pollution in unique, often obscure ways, yielding an analysis that defies standardization and basic notions of transparency. Often lumped under an umbrella heading called “feasibility” analysis and justified on the grounds that it avoids many of …

Lamarck Revisited: The Implications Of Epigenetics For Environmental Law, Michael P. Vandenbergh, David J. Vandenbergh, John G. Vandenbergh

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

For generations, a bedrock concept of biology was that genetic mutations are necessary to pass traits from one generation to the next, but new developments in genetics are challenging this fundamental assumption. A growing body of scientific evidence demonstrates that chemical alteration of the way a gene functions, whether through exposure to chemicals, foods or even traumatic experiences, may not only affect the exposed individual, but also the individual’s offspring for two generations or more. This interaction between genes and the environment, known as epigenetics, has revolutionized the understanding of how genes are expressed within an individual and how they …

Making Bureaucracies Think Distributively: Reforming The Administrative State With Action-Forcing Distributional Review, Kenta Tsuda

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

This Article proposes that agencies analyze the distributional impacts of major regulatory actions, subject to notice-and-comment procedures and judicial review. The proposal responds to the legitimacy crisis that the administrative state currently faces in a period of widening economic inequality. Other progressive reform proposals emphasize the need for democratization of agencies. But these reforms fail to address the two fundamental pitfalls of bureaucratic governance: the “knowledge problem”—epistemic limitations on centrally coordinated decision making—and the “incentives problem”—the challenge of aligning the incentives of administrative agents and their political principals.

A successful administrative reform must address both problems. Looking to the environmental …

Energy-Water Nexus, The Clean Power Plan, And Integration Of Water Resource Concerns Into Energy Decision-Making, Sarah Ladin

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Energy regulation in the United States is now at a crossroads. The EPA has begun the process to officially repeal the Clean Power Plan and currently has no plan to replace it with new rulemaking to regulate carbon emissions from the U.S. energy sector. Even though the Clean Power Plan is more or less at its end, its regulatory structure stands as a model of the way decision-makers in the United States regulate the energy sector and the environment. Since the beginning of the modern environmental legal system, decision-makers have chosen to silo the system. Statutes and agencies focus on …

Evaluating Climate Change Adaptation Mechanisms In Fisheries Management Laws And Regulations, Marine Affairs Institute, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Logan Pearce, Joseph Bingaman

Sea Grant Law Fellow Publications

No abstract provided.

A "Delicate Balance": How Agency Nonacquiescence And The Epa's Water Transfer Rule Dilute The Clean Water Act After Catskill Mountains Chapter Of Trout Unlimited, Inc. V. City Of New York, Kevin J. Haskins

Maine Law Review

Congress enacted the Clean Water Act (CWA) in 1972 with the express objective of restoring and maintaining the health of the nation’s waters. To achieve this objective, Congress declared that discharges of pollutants into the nation’s waters are prohibited unless they comply with permit requirements. The CWA’s primary vehicle for regulating discharge permits is the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES. The CWA defines the phrase “discharge of a pollutant” as the “addition of any pollutant to navigable waters from any point source.” Although the CWA further defines the terms “pollutant,” “navigable waters,” and “point source,” it fails to …

Center For Biological Diversity V. Jewell, Lowell J. Chandler

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The ESA protects threatened or endangered species, and species likely to become threatened or endangered within the foreseeable future, throughout all or a significant portion of their range. In Center for Biological Diversity v. Jewell, the United States District Court for the District of Arizona overturned a Fish and Wildlife Service policy defining the significant portion of range language in the ESA. The policy interpretation limited ESA protections to apply only when a species faced risk of extinction throughout its entire range. The court deemed this policy impermissible because it effectively rendered the significant portion of range language meaningless. …

Something New Under The Sun: The Drecp And Utility-Scale Solar On The New Energy Frontier, Brent Resh

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Earth's Atmosphere As A Global Trust: Establishing Proportionate State Responsibility To Maintain, Restore And Sustain The Global Atmosphere, Thomas Boudreau Ph.D.

Environmental and Earth Law Journal (EELJ)

Expanding upon the important work already accomplished by the Paris Agreement (2015), the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) can help create the international legal framework needed by recognizing, in a nonbinding resolution as a first step, the Earth’s atmosphere as a global trust and thus helping to create the necessary legal capacity- building among nation-states to monitor, maintain as well as restore the Earth’s atmosphere for future generations.

The Dangers Of Water Privatization: An Exploration Of The Discriminatory Practices Of Private Water Companies, Elana Ramos

Environmental and Earth Law Journal (EELJ)

No abstract provided.

Putting The Sun Back Into The Sunshine State: How Florida's Transition To Solar Power Has Brought The State Out Of The Shadows Cast By Big Oil's Energy-Monopoly, Christopher Berman

Environmental and Earth Law Journal (EELJ)

No abstract provided.

An Overview Of The Zika Virus Epidemic And What America Can Do To Prevent The Spread Of The Virus In The Future, Alexandra Parrish

Environmental and Earth Law Journal (EELJ)

No abstract provided.

Clean Power Plan, Janice Chon

Environmental and Earth Law Journal (EELJ)

No abstract provided.

It's All Downhill From Here: How The Nation's Dispute With Clean Water Act Jurisdiction Is Solved, Spencer H. Newman

Environmental and Earth Law Journal (EELJ)

What makes the United States one of the most prosperous and safest nations in the modern world? Perhaps it is the durable economy, the strong military force, or the Constitutional protections. What most Americans take for granted, however, is something people in many nations base their entire lives around: safe, clean water. Promulgated in 1972, the original Clean Water Act has been opposed and amended over the course of forty years. No provision, however, has been as hotly contested as the § 404 program for “dredge and fill” permits. Specifically, this section led to divisions on what constitutes “water” that …

Will Regulations Prevent Litigation? An Analysis Of The U.S. Treasury Departments 2017 Revenue Proposals Concerning Conservation Easment Deductions, Garrett Pratt

The Business, Entrepreneurship & Tax Law Review

This article examines the Treasury’s 2017 proposals refining Section 170(h). This article assesses the likely effects of the Treasury’s proposals by discussing their impact in four key ways: (1) the new requirements placed on “qualified organizations” who receive conservation easement contributions; (2) donors’ increased substantiation requirements; (3) the exclusion of golf courses from Section 170(h) eligibility; and (4) the pilot conservation easement tax credit program. For each of these, this article will: examine the category’s current Section 170(h) regulatory treatment, if any, outline what the new proposals require, and then walk through the likely effects of these proposals. This article …