Editor's Summary: On March 24, 2005, the Center for American Progress, the Environmental Law Institute, and the American Constitution Society cosponsored a panel discussion entitled "How to Protect Environmental Protections?" The program focused on the role of federalism in implementing U.S. environmental law. The following is a transcript provided by D.C. Transcription & Media Repurposing courtesy of the Center for American Progress. We have edited the transcript only to provide clarifying information and to make certain verbal statements are more clear when reduced to text.

Editors' Summary: This Article addresses the potentially conflicting roles played by the Office of Management and Budget in overseeing agencies' rulemaking: analyzing rules using cost-benefit analysis and exercising executive control of rulemaking. The author argues that the Office of Information and Regulatory Affair's role as the eyes and ears of the president in overseeing regulatory agencies has led to its analytical mission playing a secondary role and is, in part, responsible for the lack of visible effects (positive or negative) of cost-benefit analysis.

Editors' Summary: With his customary eloquence and intellectual rigor, Prof. Richard Lazarus tracks general trends in the U.S. Supreme Court's approach to environmental law cases and reveals what he claims is a failure of the Justices to appreciate the nature of environmental law to such an extent that they are stifling environmental law making. He analyzes the October Term 2003, during which the Court not only heard a large number of environmental cases but rendered decisions overwhelmingly favorable to those who support less-stringent environmental protection requirements.

Editors' Summary: The role of science and law are often at a cross-roads in the world of environmental policymaking. The law imposes legal norms based on what has been generally accepted in scientific circles. In turn, scientific claims are accepted only if they satisfy evidentiary rules prescribed by the law. One may be tempted to postpone decisions until we have all the pertinent scientific evidence before us. But failing to act can be costly--both in terms of financial resources for additional research and of environmental ills that persist while we delay decisions.

Editors' Summary: As this Article demonstrates, most experts agree that the electromagnetic spectrum is a vital natural resource. Yet European and U.S. governments fail to treat it as such. The author looks at contributions made by two scholars, Ronald Coase's public trust doctrine and Garrett Hardin's tragedy of the commons, and examines their influence on the debate surrounding the electromagnetic spectrum's classification as a natural resource.

Editors' Summary: Last year, the Library of Congress released the papers of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. In so doing, it provided scholars with access to a remarkable record of the Court's inner workings. Among the Blackmun papers is an extensive collection of letters, memoranda, and draft opinions that the Justices exchanged during the most formative period of environmental law.

Editor's Summary: Individuals are the largest source of dioxin emissions, contribute almost one-third of all ozone precursor emissions, and are a far larger source of several other air toxics than all large industrial sources combined. Thus, after more than 30 years of regulation largely directed at industry, individual behavior has emerged as a leading source of pollution. Prof. Michael P.

Editor's Summary: Because many of the factors that make it difficult to control pollution by individuals also apply to small businesses and farms, Prof. Daniel Farber argues that individuals and owner-operated businesses should be considered as part of the same universe of dispersed sources. Effectively dealing with such dispersed sources will involve many techniques, some of which avoid the need to rely on motivational mechanisms. Nevertheless, the motivations of such "mini-polluters" must be explored, and lessons from the corporate world are quite instructive in this regard.

Editors' Summary: This Article looks at the issue of individuals and their impact on the environment from an economist's perspective. Prof. Mark Cohen reviews the underlying economic theory of individual behavior as it relates to environmental issues and examines two categories of consumer environmental behavior: individual and household behavior in response to government activities, and consumer purchase behavior in response to product marketing and advertising campaigns.

Editors' Summary: In this Article, Prof. Ann Carlson argues that although appealing to environmental values as a means to instill behavioral change will, in most instances, work less well than reliance on other regulatory tools, voluntary behavioral change may nevertheless be necessary either to achieve marginal environmentally friendly behavior or because no good regulatory alternative exists. She therefore evaluates those circumstances in which there may be no alternative but to rely on voluntary behavioral change and suggests ways to increase such change.