Environmental Law Commons^™

Conservation-Reliant Species And The Future Of Conservation, Dale Goble

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Species threatened with extinction are the focus of mounting conservation concerns throughout the world. Thirty-seven years after passage of the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 1973, we conclude that the Act’s underlying assumption—that once the recovery goals for a species are met it will no longer require continuing management—is false. Even when management actions succeed in achieving biological recovery goals, maintenance of viable populations of many species will require continuing, species-specific intervention. Such species are “conservation reliant.” To assess the scope of this problem, we reviewed all recovery plans for species listed as endangered or threatened under the Act. Our …

From Climate Change And Hurricanes To Ecological Nuisances: Common Law Remedies For Public Law Failures?, Stephen M. Johnson

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Part I of this article explores the role that the common law played in addressing environmental problems prior to the development of a robust public law regime in the 1970s and the changing role of common law as the new regime was implemented. Part II of the article examines the reasons why there has been a renaissance in common law actions and why the trend could continue. Part III of the article discusses the recent federal appellate court decisions that could accelerate the common law renaissance, as well as some other recent federal court decisions that could slow the renaissance. …

Realizing The Abstraction: Using Today's Law To Reach Tomorrow's Sustainability, Jerrold A. Long

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No abstract provided.

Ackerson V. Bean Dredging, L.L.C., 589 F.3d 196 (5th Cir. 2009), Jessica M. Long

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No abstract provided.

Energy Independence: Challenges Facing The West In Adopting Alternative And Renewable Energy Sources, Barbara Cosens

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Sustainability Starts Locally: Untying The Hand Of Local Governments To Create Sustainable Economies, Jerrold A. Long

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No abstract provided.

Crimes On The Gulf, David M. Uhlmann

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The explosion that rocked the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20, 2010, killed 11 workers and triggered the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. After six weeks of failed efforts to stop the gushing oil and protect the fragile ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico and the communities along its shores, President Obama pledged on June 1 that “if our laws were broken . . . we will bring those responsible to justice.”

Punitive Decisionmaking, William H. Rodgers

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No abstract provided.

Rethinking Regulations: Local Laboratories Inventing A Sustainable Idaho, Jerrold A. Long

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Race To The Left: A Legislator’S Guide To Greening A Corporate Code, Judd F. Sneirson

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American corporate law tolerates green businesses. Green business decisions that are informed, disinterested, and made in the good-faith best interests of the firm will enjoy deference pursuant to the business judgment rule, whether the decisions maximize shareholder profits or sacrifice them in the name of sustainability. Corporate law generally stops there, however, and neither encourages green business efforts nor particularly discourages them.

States are more or less uniform in this approach, and thus new businesses selecting a state of incorporation have had no green basis for preferring one state’s corporate laws to those of another. Recent efforts in Oregon to …

Competition: The Next Generation Of Environmental Regulation?, Stephen M. Johnson

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Risk. In the environmental arena, when determining whether to regulate or how to regulate activities or products, policymakers must begin by assessing the level of risk presented by the activity or product. Although essential information about the level of risk is often in the hands of the actors or producers, they may be reluctant to provide this information to policymakers, unless they are compelled to do so, because the disclosure of information about the risk presented by their activity or product could reduce demand for their activity or product, increase potential liability for harm caused by their activity or product, …

The Endangered Species Act: What We Talk About When We Talk About Recovery, Dale Goble

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No abstract provided.

Is Religion The Environment’S Last Best Hope? Targeting Change In Individual Behavior Through Personal Norm Activation, Stephen M. Johnson

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This Article explores the important role that religious organizations have played, and can play, in personal norm activation to influence change in individuals’ environmentally destructive actions. Part I of the Article describes the need for regulating or targeting individuals, in addition to industrial sources, in order to address many of the remaining significant environmental problems. Part II examines the advantages and disadvantages of targeting individual actions through command-and-control regulation, economic-based alternatives, and information disclosure programs. Part III outlines the concept of norm activation and details the manner in which information disclosure programs can be used to activate personal norms to …

From Warranted To Valuable Belief: Local Government, Climate Change, And Giving Up The Pickup To Save Bangladesh, Jerrold A. Long

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Although the public discourse about efforts to address global climate change understandably focuses on national- and international-level efforts, in the United States much of the authority for regulating greenhouse gas emitting activities resides with state and local governments. Many local governments have initiated efforts to address global climate change in some fashion. But this article argues that there remains a disconnect between the local causes and global consequences of climate change sufficient to prevent the adoption of durable and effective local efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, individuals remain largely unable to connect their personal decisions with …

Critique Of Money Judgment (Part Two: Liens On New York Personal Property), David G. Carlson

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The article critiques the New York Civil Practice Law and Rules (CPLR) for its outdated and overly complex framework governing money judgments, particularly in the creation, enforcement, and priority of judicial liens. It argues that the CPLR's inefficiencies and inconsistencies, exacerbated by conflicts with federal bankruptcy law and the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), lead to unjust outcomes for both debtors and creditors. The article proposes modest reforms to align the CPLR with modern legal standards, simplify procedures, and eliminate unnecessary distinctions between tangible and intangible property.

Public Access To Spatial Data On Private-Land Conservation, Jessica Owley, Amy Wilson Morris, Adena R. Rissman

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No abstract provided.

Environmental Crime Comes Of Age: The Evolution Of Criminal Enforcement In The Environmental Regulatory Scheme, David M. Uhlmann

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The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 often is considered the first environmental criminal statute because it contains strict liability provisions that make it a misdemeanor to discharge refuse into navigable waters of the United States without a permit. When Congress passed the Rivers and Harbors Act, however, it was far more concerned with preventing interference with interstate commerce than environmental protection. For practical purposes, the environmental crimes program in the United States dates to the development of the modem environmental regulatory system during the 1970s, and amendments to the environmental laws during the 1980s, which upgraded criminal violations of …

Combating Global Climate Change: Why A Carbon Tax Is A Better Response To Global Warming Than Cap And Trade, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, David M. Uhlmann

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Global climate change is the most significant environmental issue facing our nation and the world. There no longer is any question that global warming is occurring. Nor is there any serious debate about whether human activity is the root cause. If we fail to make significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions over the next ten to twenty years, we face the possibility of catastrophic environmental harm by the end of this century.

Green From Above: Climate Change, New Developmental Strategy, And Regulatory Choice In China, Dongsheng Zang

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This essay discusses a developmental strategy formulated in China between 2004 and 2007, with a strong emphasis on energy efficiency in response to growing pressure from global concerns of climate change. It tries to show how a top-down regulatory structure was reinforced in the process.

A Precautionary Tale: Assessing Ecological Damages After The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Sanne Knudsen

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To address the shortcomings of our existing damages paradigm--exemplified by the response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound--this article suggests that we invoke the burden-shifting attributes of the precautionary principle to transfer the risk of long-term, unknown ecological harm to those who have caused the injury. Through such a risk transfer, this article posits that true costs of ecological injury would more properly be borne by actors capable of altering their behavior to avoid such injury in the first place. In addition, this article suggests offering defendants two options for incurring damages for ecological injuries--either accepting …

From Environment To Energy: China's Reconceptualization Of Climate Change, Dongsheng Zang

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Domestically and internationally, by the first half of 2009 it was already questionable whether the Copenhagen Conference could achieve anything. Anthony Giddens warned-in an otherwise inspiring book on climate change-that "doomsday is no longer a religious concept, a day of spiritual reckoning, but a possibility imminent in our society and economy." In such a context, it becomes imperative to revisit some of the fundamental issues in the Kyoto Protocol framework. Are timetables and targets really the best way to regulate climate change? Does the current framework create bad politics? Where are the powerful driving forces towards a low-carbon society?

This …

Worst Case And The Worst Example: An Agenda For Any Young Lawyer Who Wants To Save The World From Climate Chaos, William H. Rodgers, Jr., Anna T. Moritz

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Wherever you turn with regard to climate change, you'll hear about the worst, and the worst of the worst, and the worst that will happen after that. Young lawyers should put themselves in the right frame of mind to tackle all these "worsts" that are headed our way.

In the interest of keeping it simple, we would suggest a personal strategy for every young lawyer that would entail: (I) Honoring Knowledge and Learning; (II) Protecting Your Institutions and Loving Your Country; (III) Planning and Conducting Your Personal War on Bad Law; and (IV) Rejecting Defeatism and Impossibility Theorems.

Let's consider …

Resolving Conflict In Non-Ideal, Complex Systems: Solutions For The Law-Science Breakdown In Environmental And Natural Resource Law, Barbara Cosens

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In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a consolidated case concerning the scope of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' jurisdiction to require permits for dredge and fill of wetlands under section 404 of the Clean Water Act, issuing a plurality, two concurrences, and two dissents. Each opinion has a solid legal foundation, yet none truly makes sense if the science of the resource in question is considered. The opinions in Rapanos v. United States illuminate the struggle at the law-science interface. The problem is not due to either a failure in legal reasoning or a failure in scientific methodology …

Ossification’S Demise? An Empirical Analysis Of Epa Rulemaking From 2001-2005,, Stephen M. Johnson

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For more than a decade, academics have suggested agencies are increasingly avoiding notice and comment rulemaking because the process has become “ossified” by procedures imposed by Congress, courts and the Executive Branch, and because the rules ultimately issued by agencies are frequently challenged. This article reviews the rules the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued between 2001 and 2005 to determine the validity of those criticisms. With regard to judicial challenges, 75% of EPA’s most important (“economically significant”) rules issued between 2001 and 2005 were challenged in court. This is consistent with the anecdotal claims of former EPA Administrators …

Strange Bedfellows, David M. Uhlmann

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Environmental protection has not been a priority for the Bush administration, but, contrary to popular perception, criminal prosecution of companies and officials accused of breaking environmental laws has flourished.

The California Greenhouse Gas Waiver Decision And Agency Interpretation: A Response To Galle And Seidenfeld, Nina A. Mendelson

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Professors Brian Galle and Mark Seidenfeld add some important strands to the debate on agency preemption, particularly in their detailed documentation of the potential advantages agencies may possess in deliberating on preemption compared with Congress and the courts. As they note, the quality of agency deliberation matters to two different debates. First, should an agency interpretation of statutory language to preempt state law receive Chevron deference in the courts, as other agency interpretations may, or should some lesser form of deference be given? Second, should a general statutory authorization to an agency to administer a program and to issue rules …

Useful Global-Change Scenarios: Current Issues And Challenges, Edward A. Parson

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Scenarios are increasingly used to inform global-change debates, but their connection to decisions has been weak and indirect. This reflects the greater number and variety of potential users and scenario needs, relative to other decision domains where scenario use is more established. Global-change scenario needs include common elements, e.g., model-generated projections of emissions and climate change, needed by many users but in different ways and with different assumptions. For these common elements, the limited ability to engage diverse global-change users in scenario development requires extreme transparency in communicating underlying reasoning and assumptions, including probability judgments. Other scenario needs are specific …

Biodiversity, Baking And Boiling, Endangered Species Act Turning Down The Heat, Anna T. Moritz, Kassie R. Siegel, Brendan R. Cummings, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

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Today the Earth faces an extinction event on a scale second only to Earth's largest mass extinction, the Permian-Triassic event, which occurred 250 million years ago. Upwards of 70 percent of the Earth's species could be at risk of extinction with a 3.5°C (6.3°F) rise in temperature, which could occur by the end of this century.

The driver is global warming, caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. As such, a rational climate policy is needed immediately to prevent the complete collapse of biodiversity. Yet, the United States—the world's largest cumulative contributor to emissions—is in a state of paralysis when it …

The Contribution Of The Special Court For Sierra Leone To The Development Of International Law, Charles C. Jalloh

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No abstract provided.

Exciting Initiatives In Environment And Natural Resources Law At The University Of Idaho College Of Law, Donald L. Burnett Jr.

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No abstract provided.