For decades, regulatory economists have warned that rate-of-return regulation creates perverse incentives: utilities profit from capital investment, so they “gold-plate” by overbuilding. But what if that same incentive structure could drive public health protection? What if the profit motive could close the gap between regulatory minimums and health-based goals?

Executive Order No. 14156 directs federal agencies to treat certain energy development projects subject to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) as emergencies; Executive Order No. 14181 will likely eliminate the safety net for species in the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem. These policies are the culmination of decades of erosion of protection that the ESA provided, which is especially apparent on private lands. This Article focuses on factors behind the Act’s waning power on private lands: lack of enforcement and the high bar to prove “take” caused by habitat modification, the inconsistent use and uncertain impact of habitat conservation plans, and successful efforts by industry to defeat decisions to list certain rare species. It describes the cases of the lesser prairie-chicken and dunes sagebrush lizard, two species that illustrate the political, legal, and practical challenges of protecting species whose habitats overlap with powerful economic interests.

On October 7, 2025, the Environmental Law Institute recognized recently retired U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler for his long career and lifetime contributions to the development of environmental, natural resources, and Indian law jurisprudence. Mr. Kneedler, who holds the record for most arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in the modern era, offered his insights on the field and the important role of lawyers as public servants. Here, we present a lightly edited transcript of ELI President Jordan Diamond’s introduction and Mr. Kneedler’s remarks.

As state governments continue to increase their capacity for creating and enforcing environmental regulation, there has been growing discussion about the role of federalism in advancing environmental protection. Under the second Donald Trump Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) expressed its renewed commitment to advancing cooperative federalism and its desire to partner with states; however, significant questions remain about how these two levels of government can align their priorities to both advance and streamline environmental protection. On October 7, 2025, ELI convened current and former state environmental officials for a discussion on cooperative federalism, how to ensure adequate funding in delegated and authorized primacy states, the importance of continuing to support focused and foundational scientific research, and the potential nexus between the reduction in EPA’s workforce and loosened oversight. Here we present a transcript of the discussion, which has been edited for style, clarity, and space considerations.

While data centers are essential to the digital economy, new legal frameworks must be established that focus on precautionary measures to mitigate the harms of data center resource consumption. When precautionary measures cannot be applied, there should be more robust liability mechanisms that allow affected people to seek recourse. For either to be effective, there must also be new coalitions mobilized to hold data centers accountable.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County reorients NEPA’s scope, curtailing cumulative effects analysis by redefining it through a jurisdictional lens. For fossil fuel infrastructure projects where the most significant environmental impacts occur upstream or downstream from the infrastructure itself, Seven County severely constrains climate change-related impact analysis. This Comment advances three linked claims: (1) that Seven County replaces NEPA’s foreseeability-based “hard look” with a jurisdictional screen; (2) that this substitution erodes cumulative effects analysis as required by NEPA and historically implemented by CEQ; and (3) that the doctrine is outcome-determinative for fossil fuel infrastructure where consequential effects occur outside the permitting agency’s organic authority.

Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) and Independent System Operators (ISOs) operate, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) oversees, wholesale electricity markets that facilitate sale and purchase of electricity. Some transactions were potentially subject to Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) jurisdiction after the Dodd-Frank Act, but the agency later exempted transactions compliant with FERC-authorized tariffs. Through the electricity capacity market, RTOs/ISOs aim to secure reliable electricity supply and meet future demand, but various aspects of this market’s design have been criticized for its long-term effectiveness and ensuing impact on grid reliability, prompting various reform proposals. This Article considers whether adopting or modeling CFTC regulation could assist or inform such reform. It concludes that FERC regulation is substantially similar to CFTC regulation in terms of market and compliance monitoring, but is appropriately tailored to physical electricity markets; and it is not clear whether adopting CFTC regulation would help or hurt efficient administration of these markets.

This Article explores the significant, detrimental implications of the intellectual property (IP), environmental, and human rights harms created by fast fashion. Fast fashion takes advantage of gaps in U.S. copyright and trademark law; is a leading contributor to waste, greenhouse gases, and microplastic pollution; and allows for continuation of human rights violations, including labor exploitation and unfair wages. The Article (1) examines the current U.S. legal landscape across IP, federal and state actions, and corporate self-governance to highlight the gaps enabling these problems to persist; (2) offers a look into how environmental and human rights harm is directly linked to consumer injury in the United States by discussing specific detrimental impacts at the national level; and (3) proposes that the Federal Trade Commission use its broad statutory authority to regulate the unfair business practices of the fast fashion industry.