Editor's Summary: Despite its need for a constant supply of altruistic behavior, recycling has grown steadily in the United States over the past few decades, making it the most successful--and most puzzling--of the environmental norms. In this Article, Prof. Steven Hetcher uses the recycling norm as a means for teaching us about motivational assumptions regarding human behavior. In the past, scholars have taken an all-or-nothing approach toward the methodological assumption regarding human motivation; either people are basically narrowly self-interested or people are basically moral.

Editor's Summary: Individual behavior impacts the environment, but what impacts individual behavior? Effective laws and regulations, strong financial incentives and penalties, social pressure, and the like leave little room for personal values to influence behavior. It is only when these contextual influences are weak that personal factors are likely to play a larger role.

Editors' Summary: Transportation and land development patterns are a primary cause of many pressing environmental problems, including air and water pollution, loss of wildlife habitat and wetlands, and global climate change. These patterns result in large part from individual decisions such as whether to drive, what to drive, how much to drive, and where to live. Yet changing environmentally harmful individual behavior is particularly difficult when the government subsidizes such behavior and when public policies present barriers to less environmentally damaging alternatives.

Editors' Summary: Improvements in environmental quality depend in large measure on changes in private-sector management. In recognition of this fact, government and industry have begun in recent years to focus directly on shaping the internal management practices of private firms. New managementbased strategies can take many forms, but unlike conventional regulatory approaches they are linked by their distinctive focus on management practices rather than on environmental technologies or emissions targets.

Editors' Summary: The U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation and Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife effectively restricted the liberalized standing that environmental plaintiffs previously enjoyed. Recent appointments of conservative Justices to the Court indicate that environmental standing will continue to narrow in the future. However, modern doctrines like informational standing may offer plaintiffs assistance in asserting environmental claims.

Editors' Summary: Fishing stocks in the Gulf of Mexico have been dwindling for years, and in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the fishing industry has found itself in even deeper waters. But while the two hurricanes caused massive damage to fishing fleets and infrastructure, they may have also created an opportunity for reform in the way Gulf fisheries are managed. In this Article, Mike Pappas evaluates the use of a buyback program as a possible solution.

Editors' Summary: The 1996 Sustainable Fisheries Act is arguably the most significant federal environmental legislation enacted in the last two decades. The Act applies sustainability principles and approaches such as biodiversity protection, externality internalization, and precaution to advance fisheries sustainability within the U.S. EEZ. In this Article, Prof. Richard Hildreth details the U.S. attempt at moving toward more sustainable fisheries management.

Editors' Summary: On April 18, 2006, the Environmental Law Institute hosted the first seminar in a series exploring current ocean law and policy issues. After the moderator provided a short overview of the current state of ocean law and policy, the panelists shared their expertise on a variety of topics including: the activities that have resulted from the 2003 and 2004 release of reports from the Pew Oceans Commission and the U.S.

I. Introduction

Editors' Summary: The emergence of nanotechnology in the early part of this century has presented a host of regulatory challenges. Effective governance is complicated by the range of materials and methods implicated in nanotechnology itself, as well as a lack of political will to devise regulatory strategies for this new technology. In this Article, Prof. Jennifer Kuzma explains the particular complications of nanotechnology regulation and suggests that creating new laws and institutions might not be the best solution to nanotechnology regulatory reform.