The court holds that a band of Native Americans has the right to moor commercial fishing vessels at two municipally owned marinas on Lake Michigan. The court first holds that treaties signed in 1836 and 1855 provided for an easement of access to reach traditional fishing grounds, which includes the ...
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 ...
For trial lawyers and judges, the U.S. Supreme Court's "Daubert Four"—four unanimous decisions since 1993, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.,1 General Electric Co. v. Joiner,2 Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael,3 and Weisgram v.
In recent years, lawmakers of all sorts have become interested in scientific peer review, and have the hope that scrutiny by independent experts can improve the quality of their own decisionmaking. As the phrase implies, peer review refers to the process of having work scrutinized by fellow experts, and it has long served as a quality control mechanism for the scientific community.
If a value system is simply presupposed and obeyed as the given structure of the world that all are made to accept and serve, it can become systematically destructive without our knowing there is a moral choice involved.1
An important battle is currently taking place over the future direction of environmental enforcement in the United States. The conflict is in part between businesses and government; more fundamentally, however, it is between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the states. EPA's vision of effective enforcement is one grounded in deterrence, the theory that generally underlies societal efforts to control unlawful behavior. Many states, by contrast, have been shifting to a more conciliatory, cooperation-oriented approach.
Shades of the 1950s! People are worried about "urban sprawl."1 Shades of the 1970s! People are worried about energy prices.2 And they are even beginning to realize once again that there is a connection.3 Will we be any more successful in resolving these issues now than we were a generation or two ago? Do advances in technology give us reason for optimism?
Introduction
Sometimes new notions capture our fancy, resonate to some element of our experience, and color the way we see the world. The concept of a post-industrial society is just such a notion. It gives voice to our experience of big changes, shapes our perceptions of their tone and texture, and organizes our understanding of their direction. But the notion obscures the precise location of those changes and their meanings.1
Environmental laws seem to face, in the Rehnquist Court, a situation like that old silent movie serial "The Perils of Pauline." Environmental laws hardly ever seem to have even a single U.S.