The 1981-82 Term of the United States Supreme Court was marked by a paucity of substantive environmental rulings as the Court repeatedly declined to review lower court decisions. The Court denied review in more than 35 environmental cases including products liability suits against asbestos manufacturers, challenges to the dredge and fill permit provisions of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA) and a variety of Clean Air Act disputes. In some instances, the Court's denial of certiorari in several cases, perpetuated uncertainty over recurring legal issues, as when it let stand divergent courts of appeals' decisions involving the third-party oil spill liability provisions of the FWPCA. Another noteworthy denial of certiorari was mooted by Congress, however. The Court declined to review the First Circuit's decision in Defenders of Wildlife, Inc. v. Endangered Species Scientific Authority,¹ which held that the Endangered Species Scientific Authority's 1978 guidelines governing bobcat exports violated the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, but Congress recently amended the Endangered Species Act to, among other changes, reverse the holding in that case.²

Of the four³ cases in which decisions were handed down, two have important implications for the current debate over the "new federalism." The decisions affirmed that federal regulatory authority, whose preeminence and broad scope are well-established in strictly environmental matters, could also dominate lower government authority in the traditionally state-managed areas of groundwater resource protection and public utility regulation. The water law case created an uproar in the West, as the Court opened the door to federal intervention in water resource management, and in a sharply divided decision, the Court rejected a claim that provisions of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act⁴ (PURPA) interfered with state sovereignty protected by the Tenth Amendment. In the two other cases, the Court trimmed the reach of environmental statutes where literal application of their requirements threatened to interfere with other important federal interests. The Court overturned an injunction against the Navy's weapons training activities in Puerto Rico, reaffirming the district courts' equitable discretion, and protected nuclear weapons storage activities in Hawaii from public disclosure within an environmental impact statement (EIS.)