Cooperstown Holstein Corp. v. Town of Middlefield
A New York court upheld a town's enactment of a zoning law that bans oil and gas drilling, including hydraulic fracturing, within the geographical borders of the township. The holder of two gas leases argued that §23-0303 of New York's Environmental Conservation Law preempts the zoning law. The...
Edwards Aquifer Authority v. Day
The Texas Supreme Court held that landowners have an ownership interest in the water beneath their property that cannot be taken for public use without adequate compensation under the Texas Constitution. The Texas courts have long held that landowners have ownership in oil and gas beneath their ...
Oil Spill by the Oil Rig "Deepwater Horizon"
A district court held that BP and Anadarko Petroleum are responsible parties under OPA for pollution stemming from the Deepwater Horizon disaster and subject to civil penalties under the CWA, but that issues remain as to whether Transocean can be held liable under the CWA. BP and Anadarko co-owned...
A Holistic Policy Agenda to Promote Green Business: Reflexive Law Fills the Gap
How can environmental law and policy best promote green business? This is an important question. Yet, the mechanisms that scholars have suggested thus far—the market, technology-based rules, and outcomebased regulations—do not provide a satisfactory answer. None of them can successfully foster green business as companies practice it today. Reflexive law can fill this gap. Reflexive law refers to those laws and policies that push firms to engage in self-regulation. It can foster green business in ways that the other methods cannot.
Noble Energy, Inc. v. Salazar
The D.C. Circuit remanded a Minerals Management Service (MMS) order obligating an oil and gas company to plug permanently and to abandon its oil wells off the coast of California. The company argued that its contractual obligations under the lease, including any duties to plug and abandon the well, ...
Wyoming v. United States Department of Interior
The Tenth Circuit dismissed petitions challenging National Park Service (NPS) rules governing snowmobile use in the Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway. Petitioners, which included Wyoming, snowmobile associations, and a county, ...
United States v. General Electric Co.
The First Circuit affirmed a lower court decision holding a manufacturing company liable under CERCLA for response costs EPA incurred at the Fletcher's Paint Works and Storage Facility Superfund site in Milford, New Hampshire. The lower court properly ruled that the company was liable as a...
A Right to a Clean Environment in the Middle East: Opportunities to Embrace or Reject
Following the Stockholm Declaration in 1972 emphasizing an essential need for a clean environment, a number of international proclamations were issued that contributed to international recognition of a substantive right to a clean environment as embodied 20 years later in the Rio Declaration.
China’s Energy Conservation and Carbon Emissions Reduction System: Development and Status Quo of the Regulatory and Institutional Framework
Recent literature describing climate change governance at the international level emphasizes the need for more comprehensive domestic action to reduce carbon emissions. To date, China’s voluntary carbon reduction schemes indicate a more centralized approach in collaboration at the ministerial level, but also suggest a piecemeal voluntary model at the local level. Fragmented climate change governance at the local level opens the door to develop laws and regulations to explore relevant theoretical positions and implementation in the field of carbon reduction.