Environmental Law Commons^™

Energy: The Next Twenty Years, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Energy: The Next Twenty Years by A Study Group Sponsored by the Ford Foundation Administered by Resources for the Future

Federal And State Regulatory Authority Under The Surface Mining Control And Reclamation Act Of 1977, Steven L. Friedman, Henry F. Siedzikowski

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Special Student Project: Developments Under The Surface Mining Control And Reclamation Act Of 1977, William Sunday Winfrey Ii, Cheryl Lee Davis, Larry W. Blalock, Lawrence W. Hancock, Allen R. Prunty

West Virginia Law Review

The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA) is one of the most significant enactments ever to affect the coal mining industry. In pervasive fashion, it is intended to control virtually every environmental aspect of surface mining as well as all surface effects of underground coal mining. The responsibility for establishing a regulatory program to refine and implement the Act is vested in the United States Department of the Interior. However, as individual regulatory plans are submitted by the states and approved by the Secretary of the Interior, the Act provides for an assumption by the states of …

One Year's Environmental Litigation: 1977-78, Oscar S. Gray

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Designating Areas Unsuitable For Surface Coal Mining, Mark S. Squillace

Publications

No abstract provided.

Disqualification For Bias- Indiana In Prespective, John Philip Updike

IUSTITIA

In 1943, the Indiana Legislature created a Stream Pollution Control Board;' in 1961, it created an Air Pollution Control Board; and then in 1972, the Legislature created an Environmental Management Board to coordinate and facilitate the efforts of the air and stream boards. The concern within the State Legislature for the environment reaches back more than two decades, and it would appear that the policy of the State is to become progressively more active in this area. However, the effectiveness of State programs to protect the Hoosier environment is necessarily dependent upon the dedication of those persons sitting on the …

State Management Of The Environment Part One: An Evaluation Of The Michigan Experience, Geoffrey J. Lanning

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Michigan's citizens, as well as its government, seem but dimly aware of the fact that Michigan-the home of America's most growth-centered industry, the automobile-lies at the very eye of the environmental storm. This article seeks to take a broad look at the shortcomings of Michigan's environmental protection in recent years. In so doing, it groups many of Michigan's recent environmental failings into broad categories which will both clarify the status of Michigan's environmental law climate and provide a basis for its reform. Parts One and Two consist of this analysis and evaluation. Part Three will examine possible solutions and offer …

State Management Of The Environment Part Two: A Continuing Evaluation Of The Michigan Experience, Geoffrey J. Lanning

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In Part One of this article, the author outlined the scope and character of Michigan's environmental problems and suggested some of the factors underlying the state's weak and bureaucratic decisionmaking process. Part Two concludes the author's analysis of the fundamental obstacles to effective environmental decisionmaking in Michigan, and Part Three will contain recommendations for reform.

Disclosure Of Hidden Energy Demands: A New Challenge For Nepa, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

The specialization of the American economy obscures the identity of the ultimate users of energy, even from themselves. As a result consumers remain ignorant of the amount of energy which they use, and of the efficiency of that usage. Direct personal use of energy in the United States, such as electricity and natural gas for home heating, cooking and lighting, and gasoline for private automobiles, accounts for only about one-third of national energy use. Usage by industry and government to provide for the intermediate and final goods and services, for which we as individuals ultimately pay through our purchases and …

The Doctrine Of Primary Jurisdiction Misconceived: End To Common Law Environmental Protection?, Kenneth F. Hoffman

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights For Natural Objects, Tom R. Moore

Florida State University Law Review

By Christopher D. Stone. Los Altos, California: William Kaufman, Inc. 1974. Pp. xvii, 102. $6.95.

The Role Of The Michigan Attorney General In Consumer And Environmental Protection, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

In an effort to clarify the role of the attorney general as public representative, this Note will examine the functioning of the office of the Michigan attorney general. After an analysis of the nature and extent of the attorney general's powers and of his current utilization of those powers, several proposals to increase his effectiveness will be discussed.

Organized Labor, The Environment, And The Taft-Hartley Act, James C. Oldham

Michigan Law Review

The legal issues inherent in treating out-plant pollution under the Taft-Hartley Act cannot be fully evaluated without a realistic appreciation of practical considerations and industrial experience. For this reason, considerable empirical information has been collected from a variety of sources. The examination and evaluation of this data will precede the legal analysis. The data, it is hoped, will resolve two questions: What is the effect of out-plant pollution on the workers, and what has been the response of labor unions to date?

Effective Pollution Control In Industrialized Countries: International Economic Disincentives, Policy Responses, And The Gatt, Frederic L. Kirgis Jr.

Michigan Law Review

It is generally recognized that efforts toward meaningful pollution control by an industrialized nation or group of nations raise economic problems at the international level. Discussion has touched upon the balance of trade and the effects for developing countries. Yet there seems to have been little attempt to analyze how these problems will manifest themselves and how they may be resolved within the current international legal-economic ordering system. This Article cannot deal with them all, but will examine closely the international competitive disincentives to truly effective pollution-control efforts in the industrialized countries, where environmental imperatives bear heavily on national decision-makers. …

Controlling Great Lakes Pollution: A Study In United States-Canadian Environmental Cooperation, Richard B. Bilder

Michigan Law Review

In this context, a study of the proposed Agreement and, more particularly, of the long history of developing United States-Canadian cooperation that preceded it may be of use. First, this United States-Canadian experience offers guidance for the solution of some of the specific problems that programs for international environmental cooperation may face: questions of framework and approach; institutional organization, function, and authority; determination of objectives; apportionment of burdens; coordination; and implementation. Second, at a time when international discussion has focused principally on global approaches to the solution of environmental problems, it calls attention to the important, if less dramatic, contribution …

The Effect Of Sovereign Immunity On Environmental Protection Suits Against Government Officials, Richard C. Ausness

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

A number of excellent articles have been published on the general subject of federal sovereign immunity in recent years, but most of them have been substantially concerned with legislative or judicial reform of this and related doctrines. The growing importance of environmental values as significant social and legal interests compels an examination of the relationship between sovereign immunity and the environmental protection suit. This article will trace the past and recent development of the immunity doctrine and consider its present and potential impact on environmental litigation.

Retroactive Laws--Environmental Law--Retroactive Application Of The National Environmental Policy Act Of 1969, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

On January I, 1970, Congress took a major step in the continuing struggle to control man's exploitation of his environment by enacting the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). This Act, hailed by some conservationists as one of the most important environmental developments of the decade, is designed primarily to prevent the misuse and abuse of the environment resulting either directly or indirectly from federal agency activity. In essence, by establishing a broad national policy giving a strong priority to the consideration of ecological factors and by implementing procedures designed to bring agency action into line with this policy, …

The Canadian Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act: New Stresses On The Law Of The Sea, Richard B. Bilder

Michigan Law Review

The Canadian Pollution Prevention Act is of interest in several respects. It opens a new round in the historic and multifaceted struggle over freedom of the seas. It raises complex questions of international law and policy regarding the legal regime of Arctic waters, the concept of contiguous zones, the status of waters within archipelagoes, and the doctrines of innocent passage and international straits. It illustrates both the perception of an increasing number of coastal states that existing international law and international arrangements are inadequate to protect their legitimate interests, and the strong pressures within such states for unilateral action to …

Foreword: Environmental Quality, The Courts, And The Congress, Henry M. Jackson

Michigan Law Review

In America, we have traditionally equated progress with gross national product, with the accumulation of personal goods, with economic development, and with miles of roads, numbers of kilowatts, and acres of land. We have been easily impressed by quantitative measures of who we are as a people and where we are going as a nation.

In many respects the ways we measure progress reflect our society's traditional emphasis on the accumulation of material goods and the expansion of commerce and technology. Our success in achieving these goals is apparent from the statistics. We produce more than ten million automobiles annually. …

Legal Aspects Of A Federal Water Quality Surveillance System, Jon T. Brown, Wallace L. Duncan

Michigan Law Review

Collection of water quality data is also important for the purpose of determining the present and future needs for water resources and for the purpose of determining the proper allocation of limited financial resources among those needs. In addition, such data are necessary in order to conduct research studies and in order to determine water quality trends for the purposes of long-range planning.

Perhaps the best way to collect such data would be to establish a national surveillance system designed to monitor the quality of the nation's water resources. Such a national system is currently under consideration by the Federal …

Equity And The Eco-System: Can Injunctions Clear The Air?, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

On April 22, 1970, a number of private groups in the United States sponsored "Earth Day," an attempt to turn the attention of the population to matters of environmental concern. The dramatically favorable response to the idea of "Earth Day" suggests the extent to which more and more persons are becoming worried about ecological destruction. One of the methods of preventing that destruction, the obtaining of injunctions against industrial polluters, is the subject of this Comment. The central focus of this Comment is upon the injunction as a means of preventing air pollution, but most of the substance is equally …

The Evolution Of The Enforcement Provisions Of The Federal Water Pollution Control Act: A Study Of The Difficulty In Developing Effective Legislation, Frank J. Barry

Michigan Law Review

The Federal Water Pollution Control Act,1 which was originally enacted in 1948 and which has been amended five times from 1956 to 1970, has been the primary federal response to the problem of water pollution. The development of that Act in the past twenty-two years has been a story of delayed and inadequate response to the increasing problems of water pollution. The development of the Act's enforcement provisions is particularly representative of those problems. It is the purpose of this Article to examine that development, to point out the shortcomings in the Act, and to analyze the effort that has …

Michigan Environmental Protection Act, Roger L. Conner

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Each of the questions discussed in this note revolve around the same basic issue: the propriety of vesting broad power in the courts to prevent environmental destruction, and to develop an environmental common law. The need for the broad standard of the Act derives from the complexity of the problem. The clear authority of the courts to decide cases which have been, or should have been dealt with by an administrative agency is important both for the relationship it establishes between citizens and agencies, and to insure that the policies of the Act will be implemented. In responding to these …