Although a vast literature focuses on the efforts of states on climate change, they are not the only sovereigns who are working to address its negative impacts. This Article argues that though tribal governments are not part of the federalist system, they are still capable of regulatory innovation that may prove helpful to other sovereigns, such as other tribes, states, and the federal government.

Recent assessments of the international community’s ability to hold the increase of global average temperature to well below 2°C, while pursuing efforts to limit that increase to 1.5°C, indicate that this goal is unlikely to be achieved without large-scale implementation of climate engineering (CE) technologies.

As climate change worsens, so does the risk of wildfires. This is especially so in already hot, dry areas such as the western United States. Adding to this problem is the rapid growth of the wildland-urban interface (WUI).

Economywide legislation to address climate change will be ineffective unless it addresses greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and land use. Yet incorporating these sectors into the most popular policy proposal—a carbon tax—carries legal risk that policymakers and legal commentators have ignored. This Article explores whether a carbon tax, as applied to agriculture and land use, is a direct tax within the meaning of the Constitution; it concludes that text, history, and Supreme Court precedent up through National Federation of Independent Business v.

Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation in the United States have remained persistently high. One cause is common low-density land use patterns that make most Americans dependent on automobiles. Reducing these emissions requires increasing density, which U.S. local government law makes difficult to achieve through the political process. Mount Laurel, a 1975 New Jersey Supreme Court case that addressed an affordable housing crisis by restraining local parochialism, provides a potential solution.

Do-It-Yourself biology, 3D printing, and the sharing economy are equipping ordinary people with new powers to shape their biological, physical, and social environments. This phenomenon of distributed innovation is yielding new goods and services, greater economic productivity, and new opportunities for fulfillment. Distributed innovation also brings new environmental, health, and security risks that demand oversight, yet conventional government regulation may be poorly suited to address these risks.

Cities often test the existing limits of their regulatory authority in areas like environmental protection, labor and employment, and immigration. The last few years witnessed an explosion of preemptive state legislation attacking, challenging, and overriding municipal ordinances across a wide range of policy areas. But this hostility to city government is not new. In 1915, one professor observed that “the relations of states to metropolitan cities in this country is ‘a history of repeated injuries’ .  .  .

The Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review (ELPAR) is published by the Environmental Law Institute’s (ELI’s) Environmental Law Reporter in partnership with Vanderbilt University Law School. ELPAR provides a forum for the presentation and discussion of some of the most creative and feasible environmental law and policy proposals from the legal academic literature each year. The pool of articles that are considered includes all environmental law articles published during the previous academic year.

Does the duty of environmental protection belong in the ethical rules for our profession? A number of scholars have explored whether lawyers should bear such duties. But little attention has focused on the possibility that “green ethics” would also be appropriate for judges. Rules of judicial ethics frame the manner in which judges take account of environmental concerns. At present, these rules provide very little guidance that is relevant to environmental matters.

Cities have become a critical source of innovation across a wide array of policy areas that advance inclusion, equitable opportunity, and social justice. In the absence of state and federal action, cities and other local governments have taken the lead in enacting minimum wage and paid sick leave policies, expanding the boundaries of civil rights, tackling public health challenges, responding to emerging environmental threats, and advancing new technologies.