Environmental Law Commons^™

Federal Treaty And Trust Obligations, And Ocean Acidification, Robert T. Anderson

Articles

Ocean acidification will have profound effects on the entire human population and natural resources that depend in any way upon Earth’s oceans and lakes. In turn, those effects will be even greater, and potentially catastrophic, for indigenous populations who rely on the seas for physical, cultural, and spiritual sustenance. While most research on carbon dioxide absorption from the atmosphere has focused on oceans and the resulting acidification, many believe that acidification levels also will also increase in the Great Lakes. Indian tribes in the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes regions share reliance on marine and freshwater resources, and many …

The Revival Of Climate Change Science In U.S. Courts, William H. Rodgers, Jr., Andrea K. Rodgers

Articles

Science never has been the obstacle to the recognition of climate change. Since Arhennius did his original calculations in 1896, the scientific world was quite aware of the prospect that industrial-age levels of carbon dioxide pollution would result in increasing global temperatures and acidification of the world’s oceans. The brilliant—and striking—graphical display that we know today as the Keeling Curve started in 1957, and year after year it records the relentless upward march of these atmospheric pollutant loadings.

Through the years, necessarily, a vast number of scientific warnings, publications, findings, and predictions would be offered to the public at large, …

Eis User Case Study: Legal Research And Advocacy, Jessica A. Wentz

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

A use case supporting the development of an online database of environmental impact statements that have been submitted to local, state, and federal agencies over a range of years. Such a database would facilitate legal research and advocacy around issues related to climate change.

Eis Database Technical Considerations: Geospatial, Kytt Macmanus

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This presentation outlines possible methods of adding geospatial data to a database of environmental impact statements.

Proposition 65 Warnings At 30 – Time For A Different Approach, David B. Fischer

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Public Laws And Private Lawmakers, Kimberly L. Wehle

All Faculty Scholarship

The Obama Administration's "Clean Power Plan" for addressing industrial carbon emissions is controversial as a matter of environmental policy. It also has important constitutional implications. The rule was initially crafted not by officers or employees of the Environmental Protection Agency, but by two private lawyers and a scientist with industry ties. Private parties operate extra-constitutionally, and no existing legal doctrine tethers constitutional scrutiny to the nature of the power delegated to them. The nondelegation doctrine applies to delegations by Congress-not to agencies' subdelegations of legislative power to private parties. The other doctrinal lens for reviewing rulemaking by entities other than …

Ford V. State: Texas Forces A Resolution In The Cell Site Location Information Debate., Brandon J. Grable

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract Forthcoming.

Suppressing The Truth: States' Purposeful Violation Of The Right Of No Cruel Or Unreal Punishment In Lethal Injection Executions., Nadine G. Rodriguez

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract Forthcoming.

A Law And Economics Analysis Of The Duty Of Utmost Good Faith (Uberrimae Fidei) In Marine Insurance Law For Protection And Indemnity Clubs., Elizabeth Germano

St. Mary's Law Journal

Writing for the Supreme Court in The Lottawanna in 1875, Justice Joseph P. Bradley envisioned federal and state regulation of maritime affairs as “a system of law coextensive with, and operating uniformly in, the whole country.” He thought state involvement in maritime law defeated the consistency and uniformity the Constitution sought to achieve for interstate and international commerce. Over 100 years later, Justice Antonin Scalia, describing the current relationship between state and federal regulation in the admiralty arena, stated: “It would be idle to pretend that the line separating permissible from impermissible state regulation is readily discernible in our admiralty …

The Admissibility Of Aerial Photographs - Evidentiary Foundations., Kristopher R. Hufstetler

St. Mary's Law Journal

Services such as Google Maps and MapQuest significantly impact how consumers use the Internet. For as much as they contribute to Internet use, issues arise concerning the use of satellite images and aerial photographs in the context of litigation. Historical concerns about satellite and aerial imagery typically involved expectations of privacy and the application of the Fourth Amendment. Courts and citizens alike express concern with when and where privacy ends with respect to aerial views. Concerns as to the admissibility of aerial photographs have also been prominent. Specifically, interest in admissibility of these photographs focuses on sufficiency, relevance, and accuracy. …

Use It Or Lose It: Grappling With Classification Of Post-Petition Sale Proceeds Under Chapter Seven Bankruptcy For Consumer Debtors In The Lone Star State., Danielle Nicole Rushing

St. Mary's Law Journal

Texas affords consumer debtors some of the most generous state bankruptcy exemptions in the United States. This includes the homestead exemption, which permits consumer debtors to exempt a homestead of unlimited value from forced sale, subject to certain enumerated exceptions. Bankruptcy courts throughout the state are grappling with how to characterize proceeds from the sale of an exempted homestead once a consumer debtor files a Chapter Seven bankruptcy petition. Specifically, courts consider whether a debtor may personally retain funds from the sale of a homestead or whether a Chapter Seven Trustee should receive the sale proceeds on behalf of the …

Symposium: Environmental Accountability In An Age Of Consequences: Foreword, Julie E. Steiner

Faculty Scholarship

The five articles in this Symposium issue each take a different approach to addressing environmental accountability. There is unequivocal evidence that the climate system is warming, caused mainly by the measurable increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The Symposium authors include Denis Binder, Susan Stark, Julie E. Steiner, Chris Erchull, Laura Fisher, and Daniel DePasquale. These Authors challenge all to think broadly about utilization of different accountability mechanisms to ensure more efficient environmental outcomes.

Building Sustainable Futures In The Legal Classroom, Michelle Mei Ling Lim

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The stable functioning of Earth’s life support systems is a prerequisite for a thriving global society.1 There is however growing evidence that human impact is putting such functioning at risk. The likely impacts of global environmental change include diminishing food production, water scarcity, extreme weather, ocean acidification, deteriorating ecosystems and sea-level rise. These impacts will further undermine human well-being and long-term prosperity. 2 Present and future generations are therefore faced with unprecedented challenges and the quest to achieve sustainable futures is fraught with uncertainty

When A State Does The "Circuit": State Administrative Discretion At The Jurisdictional Precipice, Steven Ferrey

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

California raised its renewable energy requirement, already the most ambitious of all the contiguous 48 states, to require 50% of all electric power generated by 2030 to be generated from renewable energy. This now is the most aggressive renewable energy standard of any major economy in the world. California's low carbon fuel standard, eventually upheld by the Ninth Circuit with a dissent, appears to be disconnected with the last half century of Supreme Court Commerce Clause jurisprudence. After this decision, as noted by a member of the Ninth Circuit, California may now be given free license to impose carbon tariffs …

The Dawning Of Disaster Law, Clifford J. Villa

Faculty Scholarship

What really matters, what unites disasters of all stripes, including earthquakes in Japan, tornadoes in Oklahoma, oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, and the terrorist attacks on 9/11, is how you respond during the disaster, how you recover from it afterwards, and how you prepare - or better, prevent - the next disaster from happening. This is what disaster theorists, including Professor Dan Farber at Berkeley Law, term the "disaster cycle." In simplest terms: readiness, response, and recovery.

China’S New Law On Exploration And Exploitation Of Resources In The International Seabed Area Of 2016, Nengye Liu, Rakhyun Kim

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Despite its rich metallic mineral resources on land,1 the People’s Republic of China (China) has been actively exploring for deep seabed minerals in the international seabed area (the Area).2 The legal framework is provided by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC).3 China and the Russian Federation are the only States currently sponsoring exploration of all three types of deep seabed mineral deposit in the Area (polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, seafloor massive sulphides in the South West Indian Ridge, the Central Indian Ridge, and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts in the …

A Brook With Legal Rights: The Rights Of Nature In Court, Hope M. Babcock

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Over two decades ago, Professor Christopher Stone asked what turned out to be a question of enduring interest: should trees have standing? His question was recently answered in the affirmative by a creek in Pennsylvania, which successfully intervened in a lawsuit between an energy company and a local township to prevent the lifting of a ban against drilling oil and gas wastewater wells. Using that intervention, this Article examines whether such an initiative might succeed on a broader scale. The Article parses the structure, language, and punctuation of Article III, as well as various theories of nonhuman personhood to see …

The Energy Prosumer, Sharon B. Jacobs

Publications

Decentralization is becoming a dominant trend in many industries, and the electricity industry is no exception. Increasing numbers of energy consumers generate their own electricity and/or provide essential grid services such as storage, efficiency, and demand response. This Article offers a positive account of the emergence of these new energy actors, which it calls "energy prosumers. " It then frames several doctrinal and procedural puzzles that prosumers create, including jurisdictional puzzles, distributional concerns, and democratic challenges. Ultimately, it concludes that prosumers can be a positive disruptive force in the electricity industry if courts and regulators can manage these challenges effectively. …

Environmental Law, Big Data, And The Torrent Of Singularities, William Boyd

Publications

How will big data impact environmental law in the near future? This Essay imagines one possible future for environmental law in 2030 that focuses on the implications of big data for the protection of public health from risks associated with pollution and industrial chemicals. It assumes the perspective of an historian looking back from the end of the twenty-first century at the evolution of environmental law during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The premise of the Essay is that big data will drive a major shift in the underlying knowledge practices of environmental law (along with other areas …

Sadly, The Paris Agreement Isn't Nearly Enough, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Climate change is a major contributor to migration and displacement. Persistent drought forced as many as 1.5 million Syrian farmers to move to overcrowded cities, contributing to social turmoil and ultimately a civil war that drove hundreds of thousands of people to attempt to cross the Mediterranean into Europe. Drought also worsened refugee crises in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and other parts of the continent.

Three Major Developments In International Climate Change Law, Michael B. Gerrard, Edward Mctiernan

Faculty Scholarship

The past month has seen a remarkable set of developments at the international level in controlling greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – the entry into force of the Paris Climate Agreement, and major new agreements on controlling hydrofluorocarbon emissions and pollution from airplanes. The stunning election of Donald Trump on Tuesday casts the future of some but not all of these efforts into doubt, however.

Effect Of The Paris Climate Agreement On U.S. Businesses, Michael B. Gerrard, Edward Mctiernan

Faculty Scholarship

In December, 195 countries convened in Paris for the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. To the surprise and delight of most of the participants, the conference ended in consensus among all the participants on a document, the Paris Agreement, that will be opened for signature on April 22, 2016. President Barack Obama has indicated that the United States will sign it. (Co-author Michael Gerrard participated in the conference.)

Coming Into The Anthropocene, Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

Cannon’s debut book, Environment in the Balance, sets itself an ambitious task: to overcome this division by showing that environmental law, much as it may appear dry and dull, is deeply infused with conflicts over values. Cannon’s project is to reveal the green ghost in the gray machine, the soul of disagreement that lends shape to arguments that may otherwise seem aridly technical. He does this by carefully reading thirty major Supreme Court decisions in environmental law and teasing out the differences in worldview that animate the Justices’ reasoning – divisions that are not simply over abstract legal questions, …

Climate Litigation Scores Successes In The Netherlands And Pakistan, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Most U.S. climate change litigation falls into one of two categories. The vast majority of cases — which receive the bulk of the attention — are based on the Clean Air Act and other statutes. These include Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (2007) and the current litigation over the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Clean Power Plan. The second category, and the focus of this article, comprises cases based on common law and the Constitution.

Preparing Clients For Climate Change, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015 was rightly hailed as a diplomatic triumph. After years of preparation and two weeks of hard bargaining, 195 nations agreed on a framework for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and heading off the worst impacts of climate change. Two implications of the Paris agreement were less heralded:

1. If nations (including the United States) fulfill the voluntary pledges they made, they will embark on a massive transition away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy, including programs of unprecedented magnitude to build renewable energy facilities.
2. Even if all nations do …

The New Nature, Jedediah S. Purdy, Jo Guildi, Jairus Grove, Robert Paarlberg, Andreas Malm, David Keith, Anna Tsing, Ugo Mattei, Vandana Shiva, Paul Waldau, Roy Scranton

Faculty Scholarship

First came the insight that politics was not an outgrowth of organic hierarchy or divine ordination but instead an artifice – an architecture of power planned only by human beings. [...] was the recognition that economic order does not arise from providential design, natural rights to property and contract, or a grammar of cooperation inherent, like language, in the human mind. First is the Anthropocene condition: the massive increase in human impacts on everything from the upper atmosphere to the deep sea and the DNA of the world's species. [...] closely related, is the movement's interest not just in the …

The 2015 Paris Agreement On Climate Change: Significance And Implications For The Future, Hari Osofsky, Lisa Benjamin, Michael B. Gerrard, Jacqueline Peel, David Titley

Faculty Scholarship

On December 12, 2015, nearly 200 countries created a major new agreement on climate change, accompanied by national commitments to act. The Paris Agreement has rightly been celebrated as a breakthrough, but was unquestionably constrained by the need for compromise, and its details will continue to be developed at the international, national, and local levels. On January 9, 2016, a panel of expert commentators and delegation members from a variety of national jurisdictions convened at the annual American Association of Law Schools meeting to analyze the Paris Agreement; they considered how the agreement evolved from prior efforts, the structure of …