Environmental Law Commons^™

From Loon Lake To Chuckanut Creek: The Rise And Fall Of Environmental Values In Washington's Water Resources Act, Rachael Paschal Osborn

Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy

The year 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the Water Resources Act of 1971, Washington’s program to protect instream flows in state rivers. Implementation has been controversial and, even a half century later, incomplete. Part 1 introduces the Act. Part 2 examines its legislative history, and administrative development by the Department of Ecology. The Act innovated water allocation, putting instream flows and public uses of rivers on par with out-of-stream water rights. But river protection labors under serious limitations, chief among them the subordination of instream flows to pre-existing water rights. And, although only half of Washington’s watersheds are protected …

Table Of Contents

Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Restriction Of Placing Certain Single-Use Plastic Products On The Hungarian Market, Anita Boros

Journal of Environmental Sustainability

One of the means of rationalizing Hungarian waste management -in the context of the waste hierarchy- is to increase the rate of waste recycling and reprocessing. Although the Hungarian plastics industry is a very dynamically developing area, the Hungarian legislator has also recognized that the use of certain products is extremely harmful in the long run. Accordingly, stricter measures than the EU directive have been taken and accordingly a number of single-use plastic products from July 2021 are to be banned. In addition, in the case of plastic carrier bags, economic tools have been developed and further improved, which, according …

Environmental Justice And Pennsylvania's Environmental Rights Amendment: Applying The Duty Of Impartiality To Discriminatory Siting, Jacob Elkin

Panel II: Reshaping EJ Law & Social Policy

Since the 1970s, there has been a growing awareness that environmental hazards are disproportionately sited in low-income communities and communities of color. Under the label of the environmental justice movement, community groups have pursued various means to fight against the discriminatory concentration of environmental burdens in their neighborhoods. Yet in its Civil Rights Act and Equal Protection Clause jurisprudence, the Supreme Court has largely shut the door on federal environmental justice litigation by requiring plaintiffs to prove that the government acted with discriminatory intent in its siting and permitting decisions.

This Note argues that Pennsylvania’s Environmental Rights Amendment provides an …

Counting Carbon: Forward-Looking Analysis Of Decarbonization, Ryan Thomas Trahan

UC Law Environmental Journal

Policy analysis primarily looks backward to solve problems of individual and public choice. Analysts often seek to derive and draw marginal curves from existing data to extrapolate observed relationships into the future. Indeed, the White House Council on Environmental Quality recently issued a proposed rule that would, among other things, codify the concepts underlying these tools for environmental matters, i.e., requiring the considered effects of a proposed action to be “reasonably foreseeable” and meet a “reasonably close causal relationship.” That proposal expresses a perspective with a long tradition, yet it presents a curious circumstance. Although marginal and statistical regression tools …

Cle Working Paper No. 3/2021--A Roof Over Our Stomachs: The Right To Housing In Canada And Its Implications For The Right To Food, Tasha Stansbury

Centre for Law and the Environment

In 2019, the Canadian government passed the National Housing Strategy Act, legislating for the first time a human right to housing in Canada. This was largely the result of pressure from housing advocates to align Canada’s legislation with the right to housing embedded in international human rights instruments. Despite similar efforts, food rights advocates have not had the same success in having the right to food recognized in Canadian law. This paper considers the question of whether, and how, food rights advocates can use the process of achieving a legislated right to housing as a model in pursuing the legislation …

Revitalizing Greenhouse Gas Permitting Inside A Biden Epa, Matt Haber, Seema Kakade

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Environmental Enforceability, Seema Kakade

Faculty Scholarship

There are great expectations for a resurgence in federal environmental enforcement in a Biden-led federal government. Indeed, federal environmental enforcement suffered serious blows during the Trump Administration, particularly at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), including large cuts in the budget for enforcement and reversals of key enforcement policies. Yet, while important to repair the damage, truly strengthening federal environmental enforcement will require more. This Article highlights the need for greater attention to the multiple hurdles that plague environmental enforcement. In doing so it makes three contributions to the literature. First, it asserts that even though environmental statutes, regulations, and guidance …

Protecting Third Parties In Contracts, Kishanthi Parella

Scholarly Articles

Corporations routinely impose externalities on a broad range of non-shareholders, as illustrated by several unsuccessful lawsuits against corporations involving forced labor, human trafficking, child labor, and environmental harms in global supply chains. Lack of legal accountability subsequently translates into low legal risk for corporate misconduct, which reduces the likelihood of prevention. Corporate misconduct toward non-shareholders arises from a fundamental inconsistency within contract law regarding the status of third parties: On the one hand, we know that it takes a community to contract. Contracting parties often rely on multiple third parties—not signatories to the contract—to play important roles in facilitating exchange, …

Locked Up In The Eye Of The Storm: A Case For Heightened Legal Protections For Incarcerated People During Hurricanes, Maya Habash

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

The Lack Of Regulation In Preventing Greenwashing Of Cosmetics In The U.S., Alexa Riccolo

Journal of Legislation

If you walked through your local grocery or beauty store today, there is no doubt that you would be bombarded with thousands of different products. You may also observe that many labels accompanying these products utilize terms such as “organic,” “natural,” or “green” in their marketing efforts. Most consumers look to these labels and trust that the products are better for their health and the environment. In a recent study, over 80% of millennials believe that purchasing ecofriendly products not only improves their quality of life, but 75% of millennials are actively looking to make greener changes in their homes …

How The Safe Drinking Water Act & The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, And Liability Act Fail Emerging Contaminants: A Per- And Polyfluoralkyl Substances (Pfas) Case Study, Carly Johnson

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

Political Accountability And Judicial Review In The Context Of Climate Change Regulation, Leah Vasarhelyi

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Protecting Cultural Heritage By Recourse To International Environmental Law: Chinese Stances On Faultless State Liability, Riccardo Vecellio Segate

UC Law Environmental Journal

Several international policy documents define the environment as made of “natural heritage” and “cultural heritage” together, along the lines of concepts such as “biosphere” or “ecosystem” which have been introduced relatively recently to define the complexity of humanenvironment interactions. Nevertheless, distinguishing natural heritage from the cultural one helps analyse situations where damage inflicted to the former negatively impacts the latter. In fact, cultural heritage sits under siege worldwide due to polluting activities and environmental degradation, which are causing irreparable damage to—or even the disappearance of— valuable expressions of civilisations’ legacy. Most damages are transboundary, thereby calling into question bilateral forms …

The Glass Is Half Full But Contaminated: An Analysis Of The United States’ Financial Investment In The Drinking Water Infrastructure System, Maya Marshall

Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, & Natural Resources Law

No abstract provided.

The Legal And Administrative Risks Of Climate Regulation, Jonathan Adler

Faculty Publications

Dramatic and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are necessary to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) at acceptable levels. Prioritizing federal environmental regulation as the primary means of achieving these goals may be a strategic mistake. Regulatory mandates, particularly if based upon existing statutory authority, will be vulnerable to legal attack, obstruction, and delay. Climate legislation can reduce the legal risks and accelerate the rate of policy implementation, but only on the margin. Adopting regulatory controls, sector-by-sector, technology-by-technology will be immensely resource intensive for the EPA and other federal agencies. Even with authorizing legislation, federal regulatory strategies may …

“Forgotten” By The Clean Water Act: The Anacostia River’S Evolving Environmental Justice Problems, Madeleine Dwyer

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Colorado Environmental Law Journal

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Central Banks And Climate Change, Christina P. Skinner

Vanderbilt Law Review

Central banks are increasingly called upon to address climate change. Proposals for central bank action on climate change range from programs of “green” quantitative easing to increases in risk-based capital requirements meant to deter banks from lending to climate-unfriendly business. Politicians and academics alike have urged climate risk as both macroeconomic and financial stability risk. Relative to counterparts abroad, the U.S. central bank—-the Federal Reserve—-has been more measured in its response.

This Article offers a legal explanation why. It urges that, despite the substantive importance of climate change, the U.S. Federal Reserve presently has relatively limited legal authority to address …

A Right Of Ethical Consideration For Non-Human Animals, Michael Ray Harris

UC Law Environmental Journal

No abstract provided.