Environmental Law Commons^™

Editor's Note, Wyoming Law Review Editorial Board

Wyoming Law Review

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How The Proposed Esa Habitat Rule Harms Species On Public Lands, Sandi Zellmer

Faculty Journal Articles & Other Writings

At present, there are 1,684 federally listed endangered and threatened species in the United States. Habitat modification is the primary reason for listing. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have proposed a rule that would rescind their decades-old definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Currently, “harm” is the only term within ESA Section 9’s prohibition on “take” that encompasses habitat modification. If modifying habitat is no longer a “take,” the ESA itself would be rendered incapable of satisfying Congress’s goal: “to halt and reverse the trend toward species …

Climate Last Resorts, Michael Pappas

Publications

The United States faces a climate crisis, an affordable housing crisis, and, linking them both, an insurance crisis. At the intersection of these concurrent predicaments lie a set of little-known but surprisingly impactful policies: state Insurer of Last Resort (ILR) programs. ILRs are state policies that provide property insurance when private insurance is unavailable, such as when private insurers determine that climate hazards are too risky to underwrite.

This Article argues that long-overlooked ILR programs are quickly becoming lynchpins for addressing some of today’s most pressing concerns around climate, housing, and insurance. Accordingly, ILRs bear urgent attention and reevaluation. In …

Indigenous Land Seizure & Environmental Injustice: Impacts Of Settler Colonialism, Lydia Moorman

Journal of Earth and Life Science

The fields of conservation and environmentalism prioritize ecosystem health, yet both emerged from western frameworks that displaced and criminalized Indigenous land stewardship. The idealization of “pristine wilderness” narratives served to justify the removal of Indigenous peoples from their homelands and erased millennia of sustainable land stewardship that had maintained ecological balance long before western conservation existed. These narratives not only misrepresented Indigenous relationship with land but also constructed a false dichotomy between humans and nature that positioned Indigenous presence as a threat rather than a source of ecological knowledge. Simultaneously, anthropogenic expansion; such as pipelines, mining, railroads, and other extractive …

Powering The Machine, Draining The Planet: Whether U.S. Environmental Law Is Equipped To Regulate The Energy And Water Demands Of Ai Data Centers, Michael Marcu

Journal of Earth and Life Science

Artificial intelligence (AI) data centers have become one of the United States' fastest-growing and least-regulated sources of environmental stress. In 2024 alone, U.S. data centers consumed 183 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity more than the entire nation of Pakistan and consumed an estimated 17 billion gallons of water (IEA, 2025; Berkeley Lab, 2024). By 2030, electricity demand from these facilities is projected to reach 426 TWh, a 133% increase in six years (Pew Research Center, 2025). This paper examines whether the existing U.S. environmental regulatory framework put by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), and the …

Risk, Reward, And Renewable Collateral: Can Ip Sustain Financing In Green Energy?, Nigel Blake

Marquette Intellectual Property & Innovation Law Review

As the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy accelerates, intellectual property has become one of the most valuable assets held by emerging green technology companies. Patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets often comprise a greater share of these companies' value than tangible assets, making intellectual property an increasingly important source of collateral for commercial financing. At the same time, the renewable energy industry presents unique valuation challenges. Rapid technological innovation, shifting government policies, evolving consumer preferences, and uncertain market demand can significantly affect the value of intellectual property, creating substantial risks for both borrowers and lenders.

This Comment examines …

John Copeland Nagle Award For Student Writing Excellence In Environmental Law, Notre Dame Law School

Student, Faculty, and Staff Awards

John Copeland Nagle, a beloved Notre Dame Law School professor, died suddenly in 2019. His research integrated his lifelong faith in Jesus Christ with his passion for the environment. To honor his memory, his family has endowed the John Copeland Nagle Award for Student Writing in Environmental Law, a $5,000 prize presented each year to the Notre Dame law student author of the best paper written in the field of environmental law.

Model Law? Template Legal Culture And The Global Production Of Environmental Law, Natasha Affolder

All Faculty Publications

Lawyers build from templates. Accounts of how law is made rarely mention them. New legislation tends to present itself as original. It is almost never made from scratch. This article makes the hidden process visible. It does so through a study of the near-global spread of environmental impact assessment (EIA) legislation since 1969, using computer-assisted textual similarity analysis to trace what I expected to be identifiable model laws and clear lines of legal inheritance. The search yielded instead a transnational repertoire of legal fragments, repeatedly recombined into new legislative forms across different legal traditions, languages and decades. EIA's legislative spread …

Disaster Risk Management During Climate Emergencies In The Dominican Republic And Puerto Rico, Rosleny Ubinas

Dissertations and Theses

This paper analyzes the DRM approach as an effective framework in addressing climate emergencies across the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. These two Caribbean regions, with high hurricane exposure and differing response structures, are deeply shaped by their governments and affiliated international organizations. Disaster Risk Management is the systematic process of using laws, plans, institutions, and community networks to reduce vulnerability to hazards and coordinate effective response when disasters occur. It covers the full cycle, from prevention to reconstruction and rebuilding more resiliently. The Dominican Republic’s law-based intervention led to greater local-level community participation during disasters with its embedded volunteer …

Implementing Climate Remedies, Camila Bustos

Vanderbilt Law Review

Climate change litigation has emerged as a powerful tool for addressing the climate crisis, particularly in the face of executive and legislative inaction. Across jurisdictions, courts have issued landmark decisions mandating stronger mitigation targets and recognizing rights-based claims against governments and corporations. While recent scholarship has examined the trends, legal theories, and broader effects of this relatively new phenomenon, it has primarily focused on bringing and winning legal challenges. Less attention has been paid to a crucial phase: the implementation and enforcement of judicial rulings. A deeper understanding of how climate remedies are implemented can provide valuable insights for climate …

The Idea Of Air, Jonathan Skinner-Thompson

Publications

How we view air, especially clean air, has meaningful normative and practical implications. Today, it is commonly recognized as an exhaustible natural resource. But air was not always thought of as something to be conserved, developed, and used. This Article is the first to explore and interrogate that view.

The shift to seeing air as a resource started in the first part of the twentieth century. Previously, air was characterized by its limitless supply of oxygen: a pure public good. Over time, the quality of that good changed, and a precious resource emerged. That resource—especially its chemical and physical characteristics—inspired …

Taking Off The “Blindfold”: Exploring Montana’S Public Trust Doctrine And The Right To A Clean And Healthful Environment After Held V. Montana, Lizzy Gazeley

Lewis & Clark Law Review

As global average temperatures continue to rise, the threat of climate change looms closer. To evade climate catastrophe, greenhouse gas emissions will need to be substantially reduced. Despite climate change’s imminent risks, in the United States, both the federal government and states remain resistant to transitioning away from fossil fuel energy sources. To combat this government inaction, some litigants have turned to an ancient doctrine. The public trust doctrine provides that sovereigns must protect natural resources from substantial impairment to ensure the public’s right to use those resources.

In Held v. Montana, youth plaintiffs alleged that the State of Montana …

Truth And Consequences: What Catastrophe Teaches Us About Homeownership And Underinsurance, Kenneth S. Klein

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The firestorms enveloping Los Angeles in January 2025 made yet more inescapable the reality of the increasingly overwhelming impacts that climate change is having on communities. Many thousands of owner-occupied homes were destroyed. Most homes have insurance, but many homeowners will be surprised to find themselves underinsured, meaning their insurance proceeds will be materially less than the insurer-reported, incurred cost of rebuilding their destroyed home. The human consequences on these homeowners, each of whom has lost everything in a single week, are a now sadly all too imaginable tragedy in real time.

How underinsurance happened and what could have been …

Never Cool Enough: Legal And Policy Challenges To Keeping Data Centers And Communities Empowered In A Warming World, Cristina M. Banahan, Diana B. Wilkinson

Lewis & Clark Law Review

In a rapidly evolving world, artificial intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrency are two technologies at the forefront of the future. Although these developments promise many potential societal benefits and revenue, they come with a price. The data processing required to operate these new technologies demands a large amount of energy, using water to cool the systems and enable them to run without overheating. With such high water and energy demands, the benefits from these technological advancements come at a steep environmental cost. Despite the negative environmental impacts of these data centers, the Trump Administration continues to roll back environmental protections. The …

The Sec And Climate Litigation, Lisa Benjamin

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The controversy surrounding the SEC’s climate-related financial disclosure rule continues. This Essay updates my previous work on this issue, where I identified two opportunities and two obstacles to the SEC promulgating final rules on climate-related financial risk disclosures. The two opportunities were a shifting political landscape under the then-Biden Administration (which took a whole-of-government approach to addressing the climate crisis) and rising investor concern over the risks that climate change posed to their investments. The two obstacles I identified were business resistance to disclosure rules, and rising judicial hostility to the SEC. Today, the political landscape has shifted dramatically and …

A Strategic Approach To “E”Sg Reporting, Taylor Nchako

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors have emerged as an important investment tool for the financial sector to address climate change. While the federal government has abandoned ESG disclosure, U.S. firms still face reporting obligations domestically and abroad. States across the country have proposed or passed two types of disclosure laws: greenhouse gas emissions disclosure and climate risk disclosure. These state-level efforts mirror actions in the European Union, Canada, and other jurisdictions in which U.S. firms operate.

As ESG disclosure standards are adopted in jurisdictions around the world, these standards are undergoing various advancements, reductions, and contestations. These shifts in …

A Corporate Accountability “Turn” In International Climate Litigation, Jacqueline Peel

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Corporations are among the most significant emitters of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, which are responsible for the existential threat of climate change. Yet accountability for corporate emitting activities has been difficult to secure, particularly where companies operate across nation-state borders or have global value chains. This Essay looks at recent developments in international law, found in a series of climate-related advisory opinions issued by international courts and tribunals, which may signal greater corporate accountability for climate harms. It argues that the recent advisory opinions of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and …

Corporate Climate Litigation In Europe: Scaffolding From State Obligations And The Rise Of Polluter-Pays, Joana Setzer, Nina Koistinen, Catherine Higham, Lucas Biasetton

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Over the last decade, Europe has been the crucible of path-defining climate cases. Across the region, courts have been asked to define the limits of public and private responsibility. This Essay argues that corporate climate litigation in Europe has developed along two intersecting trajectories that together define an emerging framework of climate accountability. The first extends public-law standards to corporations, translating human rights and carbon-budget principles into private-law duties of care, due diligence, and disclosure that reach across entire value chains. The second trajectory sees the emergence of polluter-pays litigation, which seeks to proportionate damages and adaptation costs from major …

From Chainsaws To Courtrooms: Corporate Climate Litigation And Deforestation In Brazil, Maria Antonia Tigre, Mariana Barbosa Cirne

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Corporate climate litigation has emerged as one of the most dynamic and high-profile tools for addressing the private sector’s role in the climate crisis. While much of the scholarship and public debate has centered on cases in the United States and Europe, litigation targeting corporations in the Global South—particularly Brazil—has grown rapidly, both in volume and significance. Brazil now ranks among the world’s top jurisdictions for corporate climate damage claims. These suits have pioneered methods for quantifying climate damages, often from illegal deforestation, and have tested the reach of the civil liability regime in novel ways. This Article offers the …

The Tech-Nuclear Renaissance: A New Critical Juncture For American Nuclear Energy Policy, Henry P. Otte

CMC Senior Theses

Nuclear energy has re-emerged as a central priority in American energy policy. This thesis examines the Trump administration’s efforts to support nuclear energy development and plant restarts, and asks whether today’s nuclear renaissance represents a critical juncture for nuclear energy policy. By analyzing American, French, and Swedish nuclear energy history, this thesis applies a three-variable analytical framework, state autonomy and administrative structure, political permeability, and crisis influence, to identify the institutional conditions necessary for durable policy change and evaluate the structural characteristics of this new environment. The central finding is that today’s push is distinct from prior attempts at expansion, …