More than 50 years ago, Franklin Kury drafted and championed an Environmental Rights Amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution. His book, The Constitutional Question to Save the Planet: The Right to a Healthy Environment (ELI Press 2021), expands upon the story of his amendment to demonstrate how its principles can be the basis for addressing climate change in the rest of the world.

Evaluating government programs is a relatively new idea for China’s government and policymakers. Many policies and programs continue to be evaluated based on procedural standards rather than on actual performance. This Article investigates how program evaluations and the knowledge they produce find their way into China’s environmental policy.

As in prior years, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 contains a variety of provisions setting U.S. Department of Defense priorities for energy, environmental, and natural resource issues. These include measures that represent some degree of consensus on these often-politicized topics.

We are told the transition to a zero-carbon economy will depend upon the United States’ ability to assure a sufficient supply of rare earths and minerals such as cobalt, nickel, or lithium. The Biden Administration is intent on promoting some new form of a critical mineral policy, and calls for reforming the 1872 Mining Law have persisted for well over one hundred years. This Article is designed to provoke a meaningful conversation about a critical minerals policy informed by our past.

This Comment asserts that hiring outside counsel in complex, specialized matters and recovering enforcement costs is crucial for local jurisdictions across the nation, especially in the code enforcement and nuisance abatement context, and discusses the California Court of Appeal's decision in City of Norco v. Mugar as a signal to cities and counties that access to outside legal counsel in the realm of code enforcement is squarely permissible and clearly necessary under California law.

Despite existing laws, communities across the United States are exposed to dangerous environmental conditions that can have devastating effects on public health. One emerging mechanism to address these issues are “green amendments,” self-executing provisions added to a state constitution that recognize and protect the rights of all people, including future generations, to pure water, clean air, and a stable climate.