A New Clean Water Act
Editors' Summary: The Supreme Court's new federalism has struck its strongest blows so far on the CWA. Last summer, in Rapanos v. United States, a sharply divided Court nearly struck down a large chunk of the Act's protection of wetlands and other small waterways--five years after an earlier decision had narrowed the reach of the Act because of its supposed overreaching into state prerogative. Why has the CWA been the Court's favorite target? One reason is that the statute was fatally flawed when enacted.