Environmental Law Commons^™

Pentagon Preemption: The 5-Sided Loss Of Energy And Power, Steven Ferrey

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

States have attempted recently to regulate the unique form of electric energy as to its:

· Place – forcing power generation to locate in the state or leave the state

· Price – Providing a higher price for certain power generated in the state or requiring utilities and their ratepayers to pay above market prices for certain power

· Regulatory credit value -- Providing greater credits for in-state power or fuel

Some federal courts have struck state regulation of energy and climate change-related renewable technologies as constituting a violation preempted under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution in five dimensions. …

Creatures Of Circumstance: Conflicts Over Local Government Regulation Of Oil And Gas, Alex Ritchie

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars periodically note the impending upsurge in local oil and gas regulation, offering various reasons for increased local action. Papers written only a few years ago attribute greater local action in the West to population growth, increased urbanization, and increased demand for energy. Consider, however, more recent phenomena. First, population migration from more liberal states to more traditionally conservative producing states likely plays a role, as new residents [11-4] bring perspectives opposing drilling activity. Second, while the suburbs continue to expand into the oil patch, the oil patch has expanded into the suburbs and urban areas as well. Hydraulic fracturing …

Strengthening The Legal And Institutional Effectiveness For Transboundary Biodiversity Conservation In The ‘Heart Of Borneo’, Michelle Mei Ling Lim

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The Heart of Borneo ('HoB') transboundary initiative spans the territory of Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. In this article I evaluate the HoB against governance criteria for effective transboundary conservation. This approach provides the framework for proposing what complementary reforms may be needed to improve the effectiveness of the initiative. Governance issues and the lack of political buy-in are identified as the most significant impediments to successful transboundary biodiversity conservation in the HoB. A further limitation stems from the failure to develop meaningful legal instruments and supporting institutions. This article recommends improvements to legal instruments and the evaluation and design of …

Energy Versus Property, Michael Pappas

Publications

This Article is the first to detail the balance legislatures and courts have struck between private property rights and the compelling public interest in energy production. By examining how property rights have consistently yielded to energy development from colonial times to the most recent decisions involving hydraulic fracturing ("fracking'), it identifies a coherent energy/property balance that has shaped property expectations to accommodate energy needs. The Article then applies this insight to current disputes pitting aggressive renewable energy policies-such as nuisance immunity or mandatory installations on private property-- against fundamental property expectations: the right to exclude and the right to use …

Anti-Waste, Michael Pappas

Publications

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, this Article finds that the law selects from a catalog of five specific, and sometimes competing, societal values to define waste. These values include: (1) economic efficiency; (2) human flourishing: (3) concern for future generations: (4) stability and consistency; and, (5) ecology. The law recognizes waste in terms of one of or …

Introductory Remarks, James Anaya

Publications

These remarks were delivered at a Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights panel held on Wednesday, April 9, 2014.

Greed, Envy, And The Criminalization Of Insider Trading, John P. Anderson

Utah Law Review

In October 2011, a U.S. district court sentenced Raj Rajaratnam to eleven years in federal prison for insider trading. This is the longest sentence for insider trading in U.S. history, but it is significantly less than the nineteen to twenty-four-year term requested by the government. Such harsh prison terms (equal in some cases to those meted out for murder or rape) require sound justification in a liberal society. Yet jurists, politicians, and scholars have failed to offer a clear articulation of either the economic harm or the moral wrong committed by the insider trader.

This Article looks to fill this …

Nepa And Indirect Effects Of Foreign Activity: Limiting Principles From The Presumption Against Extraterritoriality And Transnational Lawmaking, David Heywood

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Grazing In Wilderness Areas, Mark Squillace

Publications

Domestic livestock grazing is naturally in tension with wilderness. Wilderness areas are not truly "untrammeled by man" when they host managed livestock grazing. Yet the compromise that allowed livestock grazing in wilderness areas was surely one of the greatest in the history of the conservation movement. Without it, Congress might never have passed a wilderness bill or designated countless wilderness areas throughout the country. The grazing exception--and the Congressional Grazing Guidelines that afford specific protections for grazers--made it possible to secure bipartisan support for wilderness bills in even the most conservative western states.

Notwithstanding this success, the ecology of some …

Survey Of 2013 Cases Under State Quality Review Act, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

The courts issued 38 decisions in 2013 under the State Envi­ronmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA). This represented the third-lowest number of deci­sions since this annual survey began in 1990; lower numbers were found only in 2011 (35) and 2010 (37).

Deluge Of New York City Laws Guards Against Flooding, Protects Environment, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

The last year of Michael Bloomberg’s 12-year term as mayor of New York City saw a remarkable and little-noticed deluge of new environmental laws. The City Council passed and the mayor signed more than 50 envi­ronmental bills. Over half of these laws were passed in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy and focused on making infrastructure more resilient, improving emergency preparedness and response, and easing recovery for homeowners and businesses. In addi­tion, laws were enacted concerning clean energy, improving energy and fuel efficiency, reducing emissions from vehicles, and strengthening the city’s recycling laws.

Us Federal Climate Change Law In Obama’S Second Term, Michael B. Gerrard, Shelley Welton

Faculty Scholarship

This commentary details the United States’ progress in advancing climate change law since President Barrack Obama’s re-election in 2012, in spite of congressional dysfunction and opposition. It describes how the Obama administration is building upon earlier regulatory efforts by using existing statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from both new and existing power plants. It also explains the important role the judiciary has played in facilitating more robust executive actions, while at the same time courts have rejected citizen efforts to force judicial remedies for the problem of climate change. Finally, it suggests some reasons why climate change has …

President Obama Tackles Climate Change Without Congress, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

With a majority of the House of Representatives hostile to regulatory action on climate change, President Obama announced in his January 2013 State of the Union address, and again shortly thereafter in his second inaugural address, that he would use his existing statutory authority to move on what he called a threat to future generations. The president followed through on June 25 with a detailed action plan.

This article describes the principal elements of The President's Climate Action Plan and the progress so far in implementing it.