Environmental Law Commons^™

Tomorrow Today - Cellulosic Ethanol: How It's Done, Who's Getting It Done, And It's Environmental Impact, Vincent Barbera

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Tire Jockey Service, Inc. V. Commonwealth: If A Used Tired Falls Into Pennsylvania And No One Is There To Regulate It, Will The Courts Make A Sound, Michael D. Beck

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Eco-Terrorism And Piracy On The High Seas: Japanese Whaling And The Rights Of Private Groups To Enforce International Conservation Law In Neutral Waters, Joseph Elliott Roeschke

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Raising Environmental Justice Claims Through The Law Of Public Nuisance, Mandy Garrells

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

The No Longer Silent Problem: Confronting Noise Pollution In The 21st Century, Alexander Gillespie

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Rhode Island's Childhood Lead Poisoning Crisis Remains Painted Thickly On The Wall After State V. Lead Industries Association, Jenna Berman

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Oil Over Troubled Waters: Exxon Shipping Co. V. Baker And The Supreme Court's Determination Of Punitive Damages In Maritime Law, Tanya Paula De Sousa

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Digging For Gold: The Ninth Circuit Catches The U.S. Army Corps Of Engineers With Its Finger Up The Epa's Nose In Southeast Alaska Conservation Council V. U.S. Army Corps Of Engineers, Jeffrey Shiffman

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Permitting Under The Clean Air Act: How Current Standards Impose Obstacles To Achieving Environmental Justice, Annise Katherine Maguire

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Most studies about the environmental justice movement focus on the disproportionate share of environmental burdens minority and low-income populations bear, the negative effects of an unequal distribution of undesirable land uses, and how industry contributes to the adverse impacts suffered by the communities. Unfortunately, trying to prove that an injury was caused by actions of a nearby facility is difficult, and this approach has yielded few legal victories for environmental justice communities. While it is important to remain focused on how environmental justice communities are disproportionately impacted by undesirable land uses, the analysis must shift if the law is to …

International Executive Agreements On Climate Change, Hannah Chang

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

The difficulty of ratifying any future climate change agreement through the Article II treaty process calls for an understanding of the scope of the President’s independent power to enter into internationally binding commitments related to climate change. This power is necessarily limited, but as this paper shows, the President’s foreign affairs powers, together with authority derived from existing treaty obligations and federal statutes, provide legal authority for the President to enter executive agreements relating to measurement, reporting, and verification; aviation emissions; cooperative research and development in science and technology; and capacity-building for developing countries.

Addressing The Energy Efficiency Financing Challenge: The Role And Limitations Of A Green Bank, Christopher Angell

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This paper will address how a federal program to aggregate and potentially guarantee loans made to finance energy efficiency projects can be leveraged to promote best practices on the state and local level for opening up energy efficiency projects to external financing. There are a number of existing financing tools that have started to solve the problem of providing access to capital for efficiency projects, but the programs are all relatively small and have had limited market penetration. One essential, but not exclusive, solution will be to create a federal entity, based on existing green bank proposals, that has the …

The Arctic In World Environmental History, Jonathan D. Greenberg

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

For millions of years, the Arctic has been the world's most important "barometer of global change and amplifier of global warming." For twenty thousand years, the Arctic has been the homeland of modern human settlement, and it has played a central role in the interplay between global climate change and human migration throughout Eurasia and the Americas. Since the late fifteenth century, Arctic aboriginal peoples, lands, and seas have been thoroughly integrated into the international history of European trade, capitalism, and colonization; the territorial expansion of modern nation states; and the transnational strategic history since the outset of the Cold …

Establishing An Aggressive Legal Framework For The Future Of Wind Energy In Europe, Tyler Hagenbuch

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Europe is the world's frontrunner in wind energy, and European governments are committed to aiding renewable energy entrepreneurs and investors. In April 2009, the EU passed a new Climate Action Directive. The Directive set goals for both increased use of renewable energy and decreases in greenhouse gas emissions. Despite this legislative success, the Climate Action Directive was widely criticized as insufficient and ineffective. Indeed, there are numerous substantive concessions given to industry in the emission reduction portion of the Directive. Dissenters argued the weaknesses of the emissions reduction Directive squandered the EU's opportunity to be a world leader in energy …

Emerging As Heroes After The Devastation Of Natural Disaster: Can Women And Children Utilize Public Nuisance Claims To Catalyze Regulation Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions By U.S. Corporations?, Tressie K. Kamp

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Environmental Law, Rachael Anderson-Watts, Naeha Dixit, Christopher J. Dunsky

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The decisions of the Michigan Supreme Court and the Michigan Court of Appeals during the Survey period, May 23, 2007 to July 30, 2008, did not dramatically change the course of environmental law in Michigan, nor did they contain any major surprises. The state Supreme Court's decision in Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation v. Nestl Waters North America, Inc. is the most significant decision in the Survey period because it held that plaintiffs in Michigan Environmental Protection Act (MEPA) cases must now satisfy federal standing requirements. Although the Nestl9 decision may make it more difficult for ordinary citizens to use …

Cities, Green Construction, And The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The geographic footprint of cities--the space they occupy--is relatively small in comparison to their ecological footprint, which is measured in terms of impact on the sustainability of resources situated mostly outside of the urban realm. Ironically, the Endangered Species Act (ESA), though widely regarded as one of the most powerful environmental laws, has been and continues to be administered with respect to urbanized land masses primarily with the objective of managing their geographic footprints. This Article uses the example of "green construction" techniques to explore this disconnect between the macro-scale contribution of cities' ecological footprints to species endangerment and the …

Implementing The New Ecosystem Services Mandate Of The Section 404 Compensatory Mitigation Program--A Catalyst For Advancing Science And Policy, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman, Iris Goodman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

On April 10, 2008, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) jointly published final regulations defining standards and procedures for authorizing compensatory mitigation of impacts to aquatic resources the Corps permits under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (Section 404). Prior to the rule, the Section 404 compensatory mitigation program had been administered under a mish-mash of guidances, inter-agency memoranda, and other policy documents issued over the span of 17 years. A growing tide of policy and science scholarship criticized the program's administration as not accounting for the potential redistribution of ecosystem services that …

Green Helmets: Eco-Intervention In The Twenty-First Century, Linda A. Malone

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Environmental Law, Eleventh Circuit Survey, Travis M. Trimble

Scholarly Works

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit decided cases in 2008 that addressed the scope of agency discretion in several contexts. In an issue of first impression under the Clean Air Act (CAA), the court held that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) properly exercised its discretion in not objecting to the issuance of an operating permit to a power company that the agency had earlier formally accused of violating the CAA. In another case, the court held that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had the discretion to protect endangered species while administering the National Flood Insurance Act …

Access To Environmentally Sound Technology In The Developing World: A Proposed Alternative To Compulsory Licensing, Neel Maitra

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

In 2008, a report published by McKinsey & Co. predicted that a successful program of action on climate change would require the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 76% by the year 2050. In order to achieve this seemingly daunting target, the report recognized that the transfer of environmentally sound technologies (ESTs) from the developed to the developing world was an urgent necessity. The report cited other sources to acknowledge that such technology transfer was unlikely to be achieved even by a combination of market incentives and funding from developed-world governments.

If market-oriented means, supported by governments, do not suffice …

Developing Municipal Wind Energy Ordinances In New York State, Jason James

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

A jurisdiction that seeks to enact a municipal wind energy ordinance must first delineate areas suitable for wind energy projects in its comprehensive plan. Then, the municipality must choose a legal mechanism to regulate wind energy projects within those areas. Lastly, the municipality must write specific regulations addressing details such as size, location, and noise. This paper discusses the choices that a municipality in New York must make in drafting a wind energy ordinance, with reference to how existing codified wind energy ordinances and model municipal wind energy ordinances have dealt with these choices.

Aliens In The Garden, Jared A. Goldstein

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines environmental rhetoric and argues that a nationalist conception of nature has long distorted environmental policies. Environmental discourse frequently seeks to explain the natural world by reference to the world of nations, a phenomenon that can be characterized as the “nationalization of nature.” A contemporary example of the nationalization of nature is the rhetoric of “invasive species,” which depicts harmful foreign plants and animals in ways that bear an uncanny resemblance to the demonization of foreigners by opponents of immigration. A typical newspaper article about invasive species, bearing the headline “Eeeeek! The eels are coming!,” warned about an …

African Wetlands Of International Importance: Assessment Of Benefits Associated With Designations Under The Ramsar Convention, Royal C. Gardner, Kim Diana Connolly, Abou Bamba

Journal Articles

A party to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands must designate at least one site within its territory as a Wetland of International Importance. To assess the benefits associated with these international designations, the authors conducted a survey of 26 Ramsar sites in 18 countries in Africa. After a brief introduction to the Ramsar Convention, the article describes the sites that were surveyed, focusing on the ecosystem services they provide and the challenges they face. The article then examines how the sites are identified with the Ramsar Convention and found that designation provided benefits such as: increased support for protection and …

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

Articles

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

Articles

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 …

Strength In Numbers: Setting Quantitative Criteria For Listing Species Under The Endangered Species Act, Kalyani Robbins

Faculty Publications

My primary thesis is that the Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service need to set quantitative criteria for listing species under the Endangered Species Act in order to promote consistency, transparency, and efficiency. I suggest a model for doing so, the use of which would create an opportunity to move beyond the political quagmire surrounding the selection of vulnerable species for preservation. Like my other environmental scholarship, the article merges scientific research in the field of conservation biology with legal analysis. With the status quo, listing decisions often turn on wildly different factors, including some not …

The Human Right To A Green Future: Environmental Rights And Intergenerational Justice (Book Review), Darla Jackson

Other Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The New International Law-Makers? Conferences Of The Parties To Multilateral Environmental Agreements, Annecoos Wiersema

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article adds to a nascent and still limited awareness that something important is afoot in international law: the activity of Conferences of the Parties (COPs) to multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). Some of this activity-such as formal amendments to a treaty or protocol- requires a state party's consent before it will be binding on that state. This activity fits easily within traditional categories of the sources of international law and gives rise to new obligations for states that are identifiable as hard law. However, other activity by COPs does not require the consent of every state party to the treaty …

Emerging Global Environmental Governance, N. Brian Winchester

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Environmental thinking and activism are steadily gaining widespread, even global acceptance, but are often in conflict with economic interests and international politics. Environmental priorities are further challenged by scientific uncertainty involving effects that in some cases will only become manifest far into the future. Nonetheless, accompanying this global environmental awakening has been an extraordinary number of international agreements on a wide range of critical environmental issues. While many of these environmental regimes lack adequate financial support and sanctions for non-compliance, they involve a variety of non-state actors, suggesting meaningful movement towards an evolving, complex form of global environmental governance. Indeed, …

Conserving Marine Wildlife Through World Trade Law, Eric A. Bilsky

Michigan Journal of International Law

Part I of this Essay marshals the evidence that fisheries around the world are in peril from destructive fishing practices. Part II argues that most fisheries management regimes are ineffective at counteracting the political pressures and economic incentives that lead to unsustainable fishing. Part III makes the case that government subsidies are major enablers of overfishing. The fourth and final Part discusses the continuing efforts to use international trade regulation to eliminate overfishing subsidies and halt the collapse of the world's marine fish populations.