Editors' Summary: This Term, the Supreme Court will decide a case construing NEPA for the first time since 1983. The Court must decide, among other issues, whether NEPA requires federal agencies to include worst case analyses in EISs. The Court will review two Ninth Circuit cases ordering agencies to perform worst case analyses even though the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) removed the requirement from its NEPA regulations in 1986.

Editors' Summary: The public trust doctrine has been the subject of a large and growing body of scholarly analysis. This amorphous legal doctrine, which varies from state to state, generally provides that states hold certain submerged land and tidelands in trust for their citizens. The public trust literature has thoroughly discussed the use of the doctrine in the management of coastal areas. One issue that has not been addressed in detail is the potential preemption of state public trust doctrines in federal property.

Editors' Summary: One of Congress' major goals in amending the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act in 1986 was to better address the health threats posed by hazardous waste sites. Congress sought to add greater firepower to the role of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a part of the Public Health Service. But more than three years after the amendments' passage, ATSDR remains an agency many have never heard of. Even environmental professionals are often confused about what it does and how it works.

Editors' Summary: Agriculture has always been one of the engines that drive U.S. economics and society. The concept of sustainable agriculture is becoming a central issue in the development of U.S. agricultural policy. It involves a difficult balance among production, profitability, and conservation.

A long-standing and often heated debate within the Carter Administration over the application of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)¹ to federal actions abroad culminated on January 4 in the issuance by the President of Executive Order No. 12114.² Though the Order appears somewhat loosely linked with NEPA, it does direct federal agencies involved in international activities to promulgate regulations requiring environmental evaluations of those activities consistent with the terms of the Order.

The war on litter caused by disposable packaging received a boost recently when the United States Supreme Court overturned a decision by the Minnesota Supreme Court¹ that had invalidated the state's prohibition against the sale of milk products in nonreturnable plastic containers. In Minnesota v.

The Articles & Notes section of this issue of ELR is devoted to publication of the papers and proceedings of the May 1982 Airlie House Conference, "The New Federalism in Environmental Law: Taking Stock," sponsored by the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Environmental Law. In pursuit of the Reagan Administration's goals to reduce federal spending and to shift regulatory responsibilities to the states, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is redefining its relationship with state agencies in the implementation of national pollution control laws.

Editors' Summary: EPA recently proposed for public comment a draft guidance document that discusses voluntary federal recommendations for hundreds of thousands of nonhazardous industrial waste sites that currently escape RCRA regulation. In this Dialogue, a member of the chartered advisory group that assisted the Agency in the development of the document discusses its attributes and shortcomings. The Dialogue describes the history of EPA's use of RCRA Subtitle D and the statutory and programmatic obstacles to meaningful federal regulation.

This Article discusses the original goals of Agenda 21¹ related to achieving "environmentally sound" solid waste management and reviews U.S. activities and policies with regard to solid waste over the last decade. Of greatest interest to the public and the media has been municipal solid waste (MSW)—ordinary household, commercial and institutional garbage or trash. Overall, the record of the United States in achieving sustainable solid waste management, including steady state or decreasing levels of waste generation and disposal, is mixed.

The regulatory takings jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court has become an ungainly body, awkward for citizens and judges to apply and challenging as well, one might guess, for the Court itself, as it continues to reshape the law to better serve its aims. One cause of this predicament: leading decisions have arisen from peculiar facts and messy procedural contexts, yielding rulings that are hard to apply elsewhere. Another cause: the divergent views of Court members on the deference properly due the work of land use regulators.