The D.C. Circuit held that a power company may not appeal a lower court decision that USDA's Rural Utilities Service violated NEPA before granting approvals and financial assistance to the company's expansion of its coal-fired power plant. An environmental group filed suit against the Service for fa...
The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed and remanded in part a lower court decision granting summary judgment in favor of the government in a city's lawsuit seeking to set aside DOI's decision to accept in trust, for the benefit of the Tohono O’odham Nation, a 54-acre parcel of land on whi...
A district court denied a motion to reconsider its earlier dismissal of a lawsuit seeking declaratory and injunctive relief based on the federal government's alleged failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Plaintiffs—five teenage citizens and two environmental groups—argued that each of the ...
Doctrinal disconnects complicate adjudication of international water rights controversies. However, legal history and comparative law sources can fill gaps and build analogies to bridge differences in substantive law. Between Mexico and the United States in particular, the civil-common-law divide at times appears vast, but has been occasionally narrowed by reference to shared Roman principles of usufruct or by incorporation of Mexican law into the U.S. system.
States have traditionally played a significant role in managing wildlife, but play a very small role in implementing the Endangered Species Act, and an even smaller role with other federal wildlife statutes. The disconnect between the federal government and states (where the local knowledge is strongest) results in both inefficiencies and harmful incentives. While states and local governments are best positioned to manage local habitat, federal oversight is needed to ensure that our widely shared benefits (biodiversity) are not lost to a tragedy of the commons problem.
The only certainty concerning predictions for the future of the environment is that most of them are likely to be wrong. This is illustrated by the fate of past predictions, such as those contained in Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb, Gregg Easterbrook’s A Moment on the Earth, and Bjørn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist. While it is difficult to guess at the future of the environment, predictions concerning environmental law are even more hazardous because they turn in large part on the future of politics.
The past 40 years have seen an increase in the involvement of private actors in environmental law. One of the best-known (and arguably best-loved) methods for public involvement is the citizen suit. This popular method of public enforcement of environmental permits (among other things) has been joined by the use of conservation easements. Conservation easements are increasingly used to meet permit mitigation requirements. When private nonprofits hold these exacted conservation easements, they assume the role of permit enforcers.
The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court decision dismissing a Japanese whaling research organization's piracy claims against an environmental activist group. The researchers hunt whales in the Southern Ocean pursuant to a permit issued under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whalin...
The call of this Article was to take “A Prospective Look” at Environmental and Natural Resources Law for the next 40 years with a special focus on law school teaching. Daunted by the hubris involved in prognosticating so far into the future, this piece more modestly explores three areas in which law school teaching is currently changing: I. Methods of Presentation; II. Use of Skills Exercises; and III. Influence of Digital Technologies and the Internet.
The Fifth Circuit held that under New York law, an insurance company has a duty to defend a power company in an underlying lawsuit filed against it by EPA and Louisiana's environmental agency for alleged CAA and state law violations. The insurer argued that the forms of relief covered by the policy�...