Environmental Law Commons^™

Beyond Chemicals: The Lessons That Toxic Substance Regulatory Reform Can Learn From Nanotechnology, Scott Bomkamp

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Workers At Risk: Regulatory Dysfunction At Osha, Thomas Mcgarity, Rena I. Steinzor, Sidney A. Shapiro, Matthew Shudtz

Faculty Scholarship

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration was born with a heavy load to bear – the obligation of ensuring that every worker in America has a safe and healthful workplace for his or her entire working life. In its early years, OSHA acted with great vigor, establishing important standards for occupational health and safety that have prevented hundreds of thousands of injuries and illnesses. But the agency has not aged gracefully. Today its enforcement staff is stretched thin and the rulemaking staff struggle to produce health and safety standards that can withstand industry legal challenges. In short, OSHA is a …

Liability For Environmental Harm And Emerging Global Environmental Law, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

Environmental law and policy are undergoing rapid change at the global, national, and even local levels. The nations of the world continue to struggle to develop an effective global response to climate change. Transboundary pollution and resource management problems command regional attention even as nations work to upgrade their own environmental standards and their energy, transportation, and land use policies. Surprising environmental initiatives are emerging even from state and local governments.

In my previous work I have argued that globalization is affecting law and legal systems throughout the world in profound new ways. See Robert V. Percival, The Globalization of …

La Responsabilidad Por Daño Ambiental Global Y La Evolución En Las Relaciones Entre El Derecho Público Y Privado [Liability For Global Environmental Harm And The Evolving Relationship Between Public And Private Law], Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

An Empirical Survey Of Climate Change Litigation In The United States, David Markell, J. B. Ruhl

Scholarly Publications

A quickly growing number of commentators have suggested that the U.S. courts are already significant drivers of climate change policy, and that their role is likely to increase. In addition to fashioning law on their own, judicial decisions have significant implications for the work of the other branches of government. This Article provides a chronicling of every climate change case filed through December 31, 2009 (more than 130 such cases). It presents basic information about the cases, e.g., the types of cases, where they have been brought, the types of parties involved, and the outcomes. It also analyzes the data …

Can Urban Solar Become A "Disruptive" Technology?: The Case For Solar Utilities, Joel B. Eisen

Law Faculty Publications

After examining the theory of disruptiveness and the inadequacy of current initiatives for renewables, I argue for a disruptive solution to solar. Achieving the kind of deployment that would be required to make a serious down payment on our climate obligations will take something far different than we have seen to date: companies devoted to national (or at least regional), large-scale installations of solar technology, and which are deeply capitalized and willing to take risks to bring solar to many homeowners. I will term these "solar utilities,'' and I propose that one or more of them should take over the …

Ahistorical Indians And Reservation Resources, Ezra Rosser

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The article is an in-depth exploration of the impacts of an Indian tribe's decision to pursue an environmentally destructive form of economic development. The history of Navajo Nation's coal leasing provides the background for the tribe's recent proposal to build a coal-fired power plant and the controversies surrounding the proposal and the environmental review process.

Comments: Recovery Of Epa Oversight Costs From A Broad Reading Of Cercla, Aaron Kelly

University of Baltimore Law Review

No abstract provided.

Mitigation/Adaptation And Health: Health Policymaking In The Global Response To Climate Change And Implications For Other Upstream Determinants, Lindsay Wiley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Adaptation To The Health Consequences Of Climate Change As A Potential Influence On Public Health Law And Policy: From Preparedness To Resilience, Lindsay Wiley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Because the health effects of climate change are likely to be significant and far-reaching, a key component of climate change adaptation will be our public health infrastructure. Perhaps counter-intuitively, recent emphasis in public health law on preparedness for extraordinary events may be to the detriment of our ability to cope with the health impacts of climate change. While existing emergency preparedness law will necessarily be an important backdrop for health-focused climate change adaptation efforts (especially with regard to natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks), the focus on emergency preparedness in recent years does not necessarily situate us well for handling …

The Constitution And Our Debt To The Future, Rena I. Steinzor

Faculty Scholarship

Health and safety laws have always been justified as manifestations of congressional authority to regulate and protect the free flow of interstate commerce under Article I, section 8 of the Constitution. Professor Steinzor argues that reliance on the Commerce Clause can support next generation proposals, including a National Environmental Legacy Act proposed by Professor Alyson Flournoy, which would require that any action on federal land involving the consumption or destruction of resources must be sustainable, as well as pending climate change legislation. But, Steinzor says, a far more desirable constitutional foundation for such laws is the General Welfare Clause found …

Cubing The Kyoto Protocol: Post-Copenhagen Regulatory Reforms To Reset The Global Thermostat, Steven Ferrey

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

The Copenhagen Conference of the Parties (COP-15), which took place in December 2009, was intended to set in stone an ambitious global climate change agreement for the post-2012 period, when the Kyoto Protocol expires. It did not succeed, resulting only in a 13-paragraph “political accord” which was not agreed to, but only “noted” because of lack of consensus. The COP-16 in December 2010 in Cancun, Mexico, met a similar, if less contentious, inconclusive end. Every fundamental issue was left unresolved at both disappointing critical Conferences. Left unreformed as an international legal regulatory mechanism, the Kyoto Protocol has no chance of …

Constitutional Limitations On Land Use Controls, Environmental Regulations And Governmental Exactions (2010 Ed.), Garrett Power

Faculty Scholarship

This electronic book is published in a searchable PDF format as a part of the E-scholarship Repository of the University of Maryland School of Law. It is an “open content” casebook intended for classroom use in courses in Land Use Control, Environmental Law and Constitutional Law. It consists of cases carefully selected from the two hundred years of American constitutional history which address the clash between public sovereignty and private property. It considers both the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property. The text consists of non-copyrighted material and readers are free to use it or re-mix …

Greenhouse Gas Regulation Under The Clean Air Act: Does Chevron Set The Epa Free, Nathan D. Richardson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Comprehensive Planning, Dominant-Use-Zones, And User Rights: A New Era In Ocean Governance, James N. Sanchirico, Josh Eagle, Steve Palumbi, Barton H. Thompson Jr.

Faculty Publications

Ocean-zoning arguments often center on the biology of ocean species, the geography of fishing-use patterns, and the need for preventing use conflicts. Here we expand this discussion to the social and legal aspects of ocean zoning, focusing on comprehensive planning, segregation of activities into use-priority areas, and the allocation of user rights within each zone. The inclusion of all of these features within an ocean-zoning regime can be a catalyst for a variety of ancillary benefits, including opportunities for user groups to form informal or formal long-lived institutions and a reassessment of the focus and scope of the regulatory institutions …

Foundations: The Public Domain And Natural Resources Law 1785 - 1960, Richard J. Finkmoore

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What’S In The Water? Climate Change, Waterborne Pathogens, And The Safety Of The Rural Alaskan Water Supply, Deborah P. Furth

UC Law Environmental Journal

No abstract provided.

Equal Standing With States: Tribal Sovereignty And Standing After Massachusetts V. Epa, Joseph Mead, Nicholas Fromherz

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

In Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), the Supreme Court held that Massachusetts was entitled to "special solicitude" in the standing analysis because it was sovereign. As a result, Massachusetts passed the standing threshold in a global warming case where an ordinary litigant may have been stymied. The Supreme Court’s analysis raises an interesting question: Are Indian tribes—which have been considered sovereign entities since before the founding, and which hold lands facing heavy environmental pressure—entitled to "special solicitude" as well? We think they should be.

To make this argument, we begin by discussing standing basics; dissecting Massachusetts v. …

Mitigating The Distributional Impacts Of Climate Change Policy, Tracey M. Roberts

Washington and Lee Law Review

Under both a cap-and-trade system and a greenhouse gas tax, the government will regulate energy suppliers and distributors, utility companies, and large manufacturers. These parties will bear the statutory incidence of the regulation. However, the financial impacts of regulating greenhouse gas emissions will be borne primarily by consumers. Consumers will bear the economic incidence of the regulation in the form of increased costs ofgasoline, electricity, and home heating fuels and in increased consumer prices for all goods manufactured or distributed using fossil fuels. Greenhouse gas regulation will also generate significant revenue. This Article addresses the question of what should be …

Insurance And Climate Change, Greg Munro

Faculty Journal Articles & Other Writings

This article examines insurance industry awareness of climate change and its implications, what risks it presents to insureds and insurers, what action insurers are taking to address it, and how the insurance industry could be a major force in getting the world to address climate change and mitigate its effects.