Natural Resources Law Commons^™

Measuring The Nepa Litigation Burden: A Review Of 1,499 Federal Court Cases, John C. Ruple, Kayla Race

Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources, and the Environment publications

We reviewed thirteen years of National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) litigation data summarizing 1,499 federal court opinions to assess:

(1) How frequently NEPA compliance efforts result in litigation;

(2) how agency NEPA decisions fare in court; and

(3) how NEPA litigation outcomes compare to outcomes in other challenges to federal agency decisions.

We found that only one in 450 NEPA decisions were litigated and that the rate of NEPA challenges declined during the thirteen-year study period. We noted an inverse relationship between the amount of time spent on Environmental Impact Statement (“EIS”) preparation and the likelihood that an EIS would …

Board Of Editors

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Crowley Acknowledgement

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Letter To The Reader

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Indigenous Law At The Supreme Court Of Canada, Russell Brown

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amici Curiae Indian Law Professors In Support Of Petitioner, Monte Mills

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Loyalties And Royalties: The Osage Nation’S Energy Sovereignty Plan And Wind Farm Opposition, Summer L. Carmack

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Enough Is Enough : Ten Years Of Carcieri V . Salazar, Bethany C. Sullivan, Jennifer L. Turner

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Ten years ago, the United States Supreme Court issued its watershed decision in Carcieri v. Salazar, landing a gut punch to Indian country. Through that decision, the Supreme Court upended decades of Department of the Interior regulations, policy, and practice related to the eligibility of all federally recognized tribes for the restoration of tribal homelands through the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934. The Court held that tribes must demonstrate that they were “under federal jurisdiction” in 1934 to qualify for land into trust under the first definition of “Indian” in the IRA. Carcieri has impacted all tribes by upending …

Board Of Editors

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Letter To The Reader

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Interaction Of U.S. Public Lands, Water, And State Sovereignty In The West: A Reassessment And Celebration, John D. Leshy

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Protections Of Property Interests In Western Water, James L. Huffman, Hertha L. Lund, Christopher T. Scoones

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Good, The Bad, And The Unnecessary : Forest Fire Suppression Funding And Forest Management Provisions Of The Consolidated Appropriations Act Of 2018, Peter B. Taylor

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Massachusetts Lobstermen’S Association V. Ross, Daniel Brister

Public Land & Resources Law Review

President Obama established the first––and only––national monument in the Atlantic Ocean on September 15, 2016. Located 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and comprised of 4,913 square miles of marine ecosystems rich in biodiversity, the protected area includes four underwater mountains and three submarine canyons. Plaintiff commercial lobster and fishing associations, seeking to overturn the designation, asserted that the Antiquities Act does not permit a president to establish marine national monuments. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia disagreed, upholding a president’s authority to protect offshore areas and vast ecosystems as objects of scientific interest, and dismissing …

Sustainable Development And Indian Environmental Jurisprudence, Saptarishi Bandopadhyay

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Warming Oceans, Coastal Diseases, And Climate Change Public Health Adaptation, Robin Kundis Craig

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Climate change is changing the world’s ocean in three important ways. First, the ocean is warming. Second, sea levels are rising. Finally, ice is melting. All of these changes have important implications for human disease risk, ranging from a fairly prosaic increase in harmful algal blooms to the science-fictionish re-release of deadly microbes from long ago.

In the United States, coastal adaptation efforts to date have been sluggish. Many uncertainties attend climate change’s effects on the ocean, particularly with regard to sea-level rise and ice melting. In addition, the time scales involved are generally long, outside of the planning ken …

Trickster Law: Promoting Resilience And Adaptive Governance By Allowing Other Perspectives On Natural Resource Management, Robin Kundis Craig

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The Anthropocene requires a new approach to natural resources law and policy, an approach that this short article terms "trickster law." Trickster law incorporates insights from resilience theory, adaptive governance scholarship, and cultural/anthropological studies of trickster tales to create a legal approach to natural resource management that is precautionary, engaged in proactive planning, based in principled flexibility, and pluralistic. This article focuses on the "pluralism" component, presenting three examples of how law modified to be more inclusive and respect different value systems has generated new approaches to natural resources management that better promote social-ecological resilience to climate change and other …

Adaptive Management For Ecosystem Services At The Wildland-Urban Interface, Robin Kundis Craig, J.B. Ruhl

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Managing the wildland-urban interface (WUI) is a widely-recognized land use problem plagued by a fractured geography of land parcels, management jurisdictions, and governance mandates and objectives. People who work in this field have suggested a variety of approaches to managing this interface, from informal governance to contracting to insurance. To date, however, none of these scholars have fully embraced the dynamism, uncertainty, and complexity of the WUI — that is, its status as a complex adaptive system. In focusing almost exclusively on the management of this interface to control wildfire, this scholarship largely ignores the factor that rampant wildfire is …

Atomizing The Clean Water Act: Ignoring The Whole Statute And Asking The Wrong Questions, Robert W. Adler, Brian House

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

When attempting to resolve difficult issues of statutory construction involving complex statutes, courts sometimes focus on individual words and phrases without evaluating how they fit within the text and structure of the whole statute. We call this “atomization” of the statutory text. Judges have fallen into this trap in construing the Clean Water Act (CWA) and other lengthy, complex federal environmental statutes. That tendency contributes to ongoing confusion about the scope and coverage of the CWA. During the 2019-2020 Term, the U.S. Supreme Court will resolve a circuit split in the most recent line of cases exhibiting this tendency. Courts …

The International Law Commission And The Progressive Development And Codification Of Principles Of International Environmental Law, Nilüfer Oral

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Controlling Biogenic Volatile Organic Compounds For Air Quality, Brian Sawers

Indiana Law Journal

This Article tells a story that is true but seems completely wrong: Trees can make air pollution worse. Smog and ground-level ozone require two chemical ingredients to form: nitrous oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). On a warm, sunny day, these two precursors combine to form smog and ground-level ozone, a pollutant. While NOx are pollutants that are largely human-created, VOCs can originate with plants. In fact, emissions of just one type of VOC from trees exceed all human-caused emissions.

This Article presents new research on the impact of plants, especially trees, on air quality. The science is complicated …

How International Oil Companies Could Assist Greece To Achieve The Sustainable Development Goals: A Conversation Starter, Alexandra Sdoukou, Andreas Tornaritis, Perrine Toledano

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

This policy paper wishes to be a timely contribution towards a fruitful debate among stakeholders; it urges International Oil Companies (IOCs) to examine how the critical Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for Greece can be integrated into their core business so that the oil and gas industry can contribute to the country’s sustainable growth.

Bridging The Information Gap: How Access To Land Contracts Can Serve Community Rights, Lara Wallis, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Land contracts (also known as investor-state contracts, or concession agreements) show what commitments a forestry, farming or renewable energy company has made and what the government has said the company can do on the land. These promises define the positive and harmful effects the company’s project could have on community members’ livelihoods and human rights, and on the environment.

Accessing land contracts is a crucial strategy for local organizations. This briefing note explains how local organizations can use land contracts and the Open Land Contracts repository (OpenLandContracts.org) to help communities to:

• Understand company and government obligations related to a company …

Strictly Leakage: How Minnesota Export Subsidies Pay For Climate Pollution, Hudson B. Kingston

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Introduction: What You Don't Know Does Protect You, Rebecca Roose

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

The New Agriculture: From Food Farms To Solar Farms, Jessica Owley, Amy Wilson Morris

Articles

Across the United States, government agencies and energy developers are looking to agricultural land for development of renewable energy. One attraction of agricultural lands is that they are already relatively ecologically impaired compared with the previous solar development sites in the California and Arizona desert that have been a major source of concern for many environmental groups-and subject to expensive mitigation requirements under the Endangered Species Act. Renewable energy development pressures are accelerating the existing loss of agricultural land, heightening concerns about food security and the economic viability of agricultural communities. California farmland is at the center of this conflict. …

Introduction: Property In Ecology, Jonathan H. Adler

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Island Invasion: The Silent Crisis In Hawaii, Sophia Janssen

Pomona Senior Theses

Keeping out invasive species may, upon first review, seem like a trivial environmental cry from ecologists and deep environmentalists; a belated wish to return to an undeveloped world where nature was pristine. However invasive species create problems that impact all of us and can have far more severe consequences than changing a stunning landscape. These problems are heightened in islands like Hawaii, where the fragile ecosystems have developed over centuries of evolution and adaptation. The introduction of a disease-carrying mosquito can put the people of Hawaii at risk to many vector-born illnesses and create an epidemic, taking human life. The …