This Article calls on the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to issue guidance clarifying that concurrent decommissioning is a “connected action” under the National Environmental Policy Act for relocation, managed retreat, and protect-in-place projects aimed at replacing infrastructure in environmentally threatened Alaska Native communities.
What is climate litigation? Widely accepted definitions suggest it is any litigation pertaining directly or indirectly to climate change, which encompasses both strategic and routine litigation. Building on this framework, previous empirical assessments have found that climate litigation has not prompted a climate-oriented jurisprudence. However, empirical evidence suggests that strategic litigation—and not routine litigation—has contributed to development of a climate-oriented jurisprudence in jurisdictions across the globe.
This Comment illustrates, through a case study of the Delta smelt BiOp, the difficulties in making ESA jeopardy determinations for species on the brink of extinction. We conclude that the myriad challenges inherent in conservation of some small and declining populations make reasoned §7 analysis difficult, bordering on impossible.
The Silencing Science Tracker is an online database that records anti-science actions taken by the federal government. Drawing on three-and-a-half years of tracker data, this Comment analyzes the Trump Administration’s evolving war on science and shows how it is changing the way federal agencies perform, use, and communicate scientific research. We focus primarily on climate science, which has been the subject of particularly fierce attacks under President Trump, though
This Article addresses the pressing need for six “green states”—New York, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Montana, and Pennsylvania—to adopt quasi-judicial mechanisms for enforcement of their constitutional right to environment. It analyzes the challenges and limitations of traditional litigation in enforcing this right, and compares the special master system in the United States with environmental judicial commissions in Pakistan.
The relationship between the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights regime under the World Trade Organization is complex. The manner in which intellectual property rights (IPRs) pertaining to genetic resources (GRs) and associated traditional knowledge (ATK) are handled is the main source of this dissonance.
On June 28, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, concluding that courts have a constitutional and statutory obligation to exercise their “independent judgment” when deciding whether a federal administrative agency has acted within its statutory authority. As Justice Neil Gorsuch noted in concurrence, the Court’s decision “places a tombstone on Chevron no one can miss.” This Comment discusses the Court’s decision and its implications for legal challenges to federal agency actions.
The Joseph Biden Administration has signaled an interest in ensuring that regulations appropriately benefit vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. Prior presidential administrations have focused on ensuring that regulations are efficient, maximizing the net benefits to society, without considering who benefits or who loses from these policies. Supporters of the current process are concerned that pursuing equity will come at significant cost to efficiency and ultimately leave everyone worse off. This framework—efficiency versus equity—is misguided and counterproductive in many cases.
This Comment touches on some of the key concerns that Dave Owen's The Negotiable Implementation of Environmental Law raised about equity and transparency in environmental law, and shares a couple of examples that have emerged in the last few months that people are inventing to try to address this.
Black letter law is implemented in countless shades of gray, with interpretation and negotiation at virtually every step of the way. Prof. Dave Owen’s The Negotiable Implementation of Environmental Law digs deep, beyond the obvious, to underscore that negotiation is not a dark art but a necessary skill that deserves more attention and training.