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The Trump Administration's Self-Inflicted Problem: Why Repealing CEQ Regulations Will Delay Infrastructure and Energy Development

For the first time in nearly 50 years, following the federal government's recission of CEQ's NEPA implementing regulations on April 11, 2025, there are no governmentwide regulations in place to provide consistent direction to all federal agencies on how to implement the governmentwide procedural obligations established by NEPA. This Comment explains the costs of eliminating the common floor that the CEQ regulations had established for federal agencies conducting the environmental analyses required to comply with NEPA’s statutory mandate, and why those costs need not have been incurred.

A Treaty Right to Healthy Forests? Using Tribal Fishing Rights to Challenge Timber Sales

Tribes in the Pacific Northwest have faced persistent obstacles to their exercise of treaty fishing rights, most prominently illegal regulation of off-reservation fishing by state governments. As salmon decline, a new frontier is emerging for treaty right violations: environmental degradation. A recent court victory ruled that a series of culverts owned and operated by the state of Washington violated tribal treaty rights to fish for salmonids at their “usual and accustomed” places.

Great Salt Lake, Environmental Crises, and Securities Liability

This Article examines the intersection of environmental crises and financial disclosure obligations through the lens of Great Salt Lake. As the lake shrinks to unprecedented levels, the resulting dust storms, diminished snowpack, and destabilized ecosystems increasingly threaten both the public health and economic viability of Utah’s most populous region, and economic impacts will extend far beyond industries directly dependent on the lake.

Restricting Oil and Gas Leases Through Withdrawals Under OCSLA: Can A President Rescind?

This Comment focuses on energy developments offshore. Part I recognizes OCSLA’s purpose of balancing energy needs with protection of marine animals, coastal beaches, and wetlands. Part II discusses examples of presidential use of OCSLA §12(a) authority to protect (withdraw from leasing) portions of the OCS temporarily or permanently, including challenges to President Biden’s recent withdrawal of the East Coast, West Coast, and part of the Gulf of Mexico and Bering Strait from future oil and gas leases.

Local Environmental Impacts of Data Center Proliferation

Demand for data centers is increasing worldwide, raising questions about the electric grid, the transition to renewable energy, and distribution infrastructure. Northern Virginia is home to data centers that process nearly 70% of global digital traffic, leading officials to call for construction, at ratepayers’ expense, of new power plants and new transmission lines across four states, as well as the continued operation of coal-powered plants that had been scheduled to go offline.

Climate Litigation as Strategic Litigation

What is climate litigation? Widely accepted definitions suggest it is any litigation pertaining directly or indirectly to climate change, which encompasses both strategic and routine litigation. Building on this framework, previous empirical assessments have found that climate litigation has not prompted a climate-oriented jurisprudence. However, empirical evidence suggests that strategic litigation—and not routine litigation—has contributed to development of a climate-oriented jurisprudence in jurisdictions across the globe.

Small Populations in Jeopardy: A Delta Smelt Case Study

This Comment illustrates, through a case study of the Delta smelt BiOp, the difficulties in making ESA jeopardy determinations for species on the brink of extinction. We conclude that the myriad challenges inherent in conservation of some small and declining populations make reasoned §7 analysis difficult, bordering on impossible.

When Politics Trump Science: The Erosion of Science-Based Regulation

The Silencing Science Tracker is an online database that records anti-science actions taken by the federal government. Drawing on three-and-a-half years of tracker data, this Comment analyzes the Trump Administration’s evolving war on science and shows how it is changing the way federal agencies perform, use, and communicate scientific research. We focus primarily on climate science, which has been the subject of particularly fierce attacks under President Trump, though

Protecting the Right to Environment: The Roles of Judicial Commissions and Special Masters

This Article addresses the pressing need for six “green states”—New York, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Montana, and Pennsylvania—to adopt quasi-judicial mechanisms for enforcement of their constitutional right to environment. It analyzes the challenges and limitations of traditional litigation in enforcing this right, and compares the special master system in the United States with environmental judicial commissions in Pakistan.