The court upholds the Secretary of Energy's interpretation of the term "provide for" within a provision of the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act that entitles states and regional radioactive-waste disposal compacts to a rebate of their waste disposal surcharges. Plaintiff regional co...
The court holds that a county's action to quiet title to real property used by the United States as a wildlife management area on Matagorda Island in Texas is time barred. The federal government condemned a portion of Matagorda Island for use as a bombing and gunnery range, and in 1982 the U.S. Fish...
The court upholds the U.S. Forest Service's interpretation of the term "native" and its environmental assessment (EA) for an ecological project in Shawnee National Forest in Illinois. The appellants argued that the ecological project will have an adverse effect on shortleaf pines and pine warblers i...
The court holds that the U.S. Forest Service failed to comply with National Forest Management Act (NFMA) and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirements in determining whether to allow a timber sale in the Payette National Forest in Idaho. The court first holds that the Forest Service fail...
The court dismisses a property owner's Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA), and state common-law claims against prior owners of the property and a state agency for r...
The Court holds that the Fifth Circuit lacked jurisdiction over a suit to set aside a 1982 settlement agreement that quieted title to lands on Horn Island, Mississippi, in U.S. favor. After concluding that the Quiet Title Act conferred jurisdiction, the Fifth Circuit, relying on a 1781 Spanish land ...
Few commentators doubt the value of clean, unadulterated waters teeming with varied and colorful aquatic life. The debate centers instead on more pragmatic concerns, that is, how to best accomplish the accepted imperative. Some maintain that the primary responsibility should fall on the federal government because of its insularity from regional economic and political pressures. Others suggest that states should take the lead because of their familiarity with and ability to respond to local environmental concerns. Both sides have valid points.
Editors' Summary: This Article addresses the effect of the U.S. Constitution's Takings Clause on the government's authority to protect environmental resources. An earlier Article, published in the May 1994 of ELR, analyzed bases for government regulation provided by limitations inherent in the property right itself. In contrast, this Article focuses on an emerging doctrine of sustainable use, rooted in background principles of nuisance law and the government's complementary police power.
Editors' Summary: Environmental regulation has come under increasing attack from those who argue that governmental limitations on property use violate constitutional restrictions on regulatory takings of property. The author addresses this controversy by focusing on the background limitations on owners' rights that are inherent in property law itself, as opposed to the external controls that government may impose under the doctrines of police power and nuisance.
Is an intentional temporary deprivation of the use of land not a "temporary taking"? This proposition was asserted by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. The Ninth Circuit denied en banc review, despite a strong dissent by Judge Alex Kozinski. Perhaps because it had never explicated the meaning of "temporary taking," and perhaps in part because its interest was kindled by the Kozinski dissent, the U.S. Supreme Court recently granted certiorari. The question is limited to: