The February 2009 collision of a dead Russian satellite with an Iridium communications satellite left a cloud of debris in orbit and a number of questions on earth as to why and how it happened and who was responsible. Contrary to some popular impressions, outer space is not a lawless region, but an area governed by international law (and, in the case of U.S. spacecrafts and the U.S. parts of the International Space Station, by American law). Unfortunately, existing space law is inadequate to deal with the growing problem of space collisions and space debris.

Editors' Summary

Editors' Summary:

Editors' Summary

Recent experience as an economic expert in a groundwater contamination lawsuit reveals that lawyers and financial experts are unclear about what criteria govern temporal posture for determining economic losses. Whether damages should be benchmarked ex ante at the time of harm, or ex post at the time of trial, has a long intellectual history in financial and legal journals--and in case decisions. The theoretical elegance of some of the considerations discussed in the literature may overwhelm the practical issues governing choice of temporal posture in a contamination case.

Editors' Summary

Editors' Summary

Policymakers should work to place a floor under the price of crude oil and derivates by imposing a variable import tax on those products. A variable import tax would give consumers and the alternative energy industries a clear price signal in order to improve their decisionmaking, as well as to provide a steady price signal to domestic energy producers. The tax would also prevent price collapses. Although economists have debated flat oil import fees vigorously, this proposal has been overlooked to date.

Janice M. Schneider: As we've seen in California and other states, renewable portfolio standards and greenhouse gas legislation are driving the need for expeditious renewable energy development on the federal level. Of course, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the Stimulus Bill, committed an unprecedented amount of federal resources toward development of renewable energy, but also placed tight deadlines on the development of eligible projects.

Editors' Summary

In 1971, The Quiet Revolution in Land Use Control inspired numerous scholarly debates about the states' role in land use regulation. In that book, Fred Bosselman and David Callies recognized that localities have long borrowed states' police power to regulate land use. They nonetheless argued that certain land use issues, such as those involving the environment, transcended local government boundaries and competencies.