The decisions of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in American Trucking Ass'n v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,¹ which remanded in part and vacated in part the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) promulgation of revised national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for ozone and particulate matter (PM) under the federal Clean Air Act (CAA),² might have significant implications for the future of U.S. air quality law and policy.

This Article reviews the empirical research on the effectiveness of monitoring and enforcement of environmental policy in deterring individuals and firms from violating environmental laws or achieving an improved level of environmental performance. It considers both "monitoring" activities (such as government inspections) and "enforcement" activities (such as sanctions, remedial actions, and other mechanisms designed to punish and/or bring a firm into compliance).

Common-law nuisance actions have long been a part of our jurisprudence.¹ Landowners who are not reasonable in their use of property can be restrained under an action in nuisance. While courts have balanced the utilities and applied various tests of reasonableness, the end result is that an activity or land use that is too offensive to surrounding property owners may be enjoined.

In the case of United States-Import Prohibition of Certain Shrimp and Shrimp Products (US-Shrimp),¹ the Appellate Body of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade's (GATT's) World Trade Organization (WTO)² declared that actions taken by the United States to protect endangered sea turtles were GATT-illegal. Despite the official U.S.

Since the 1970s, the federal government has imposed progressively stringent regulations on the discharge of hazardous and toxic substances into the air, water, and soil in order to protect the public from the presumed health risks of exposure to these pollutants.¹ The acceptance of the precautionary principle by Congress and the courts in the 1970s has led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other agencies to base toxic pollutant standards on risk assessments. The use of risk assessments has been criticized from many perspectives.

Contrary to the bleakest predictions offered by environmental fatalists during the latter half of the 1900s, humanity and much of the plant and animal kingdom survived New Year's Eve 1999. Similarly, contrary to the dire warnings of industrial organizations and lobbyists that overburdening environmental regulations would spell the end of profitable, American capitalism, the year 2000 dawned in the United States with the world's most extensive array of antipollution and pro-conservation measures regulating the globe's most impressive economic engines.

"'Now, that's what I was afraid of!' Porfiry exclaimed hotly and as if involuntarily.

'That's what I was afraid of, that you don't want our reduction.'"

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment¹

In the quarter century since the first applications of recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) technology in agriculture were submitted for regulatory approval in the United States, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have come to represent an increasingly large share of the grain produced in the United States.

Coral reefs are some of the most biologically diverse and economically productive ecosystems in the world, and there are approximately 4.2 million acres of coral reefs within the jurisdiction of the United States,¹ located off the coasts of Florida, Hawaii, Texas, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and various other American-held islands in the South Pacific.² However, most of these reefs are suffering from environmental degradation.

In the past decade, environmental insurance has evolved into uniquely different applications. Coverages have broadened, new products have been introduced, and premiums have decreased. Over the last few years, such insurance has also received greater attention from attorneys, their business clients, and corporate risk managers. This Dialogue will discuss the types of environmental coverages generally available and guide the practitioner and risk manager through the intricacies of these specialized policies and coverage concepts.