Editors' Summary: The actions of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may well be one of the single most influential factors influencing the quality of the nation's environment. EPA is often the maker of environmental policy as it writes regulations, balances when and how to enforce its laws, distributes grants, approves state programs, and proposes or comments on legislation before Congress. EPA must work effectively as one agency among dozens in the federal government, knowing when to press environmental issues and when to hold back.

Editors' Summary: In 1987, the Supreme Court issued two blockbuster regulatory takings decisions. The decisions provide some much-needed guidance for deciding when government regulation constitutes a taking of private property requiring just compensation under the Fifth Amendment. However, the decisions have also raised concern among federal agencies about the takings implications of their actions.

Editors' Summary: Perhaps no law in the federal natural resources arsenal has engendered more long-term controversy, while nonetheless maintaining its original structure and premise, than the Mining Law of 1872. Enacted to validate the trespasses of prospectors on the public lands, this "hardrock" mining law truly embodies the spirit of the Old West and the independence of the miner. The era of disposal of the public lands into private hands is ending, however, and the door to such disposal was essentially shut with the enactment of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in 1976.

Editors' Summary: With virtual certainty, one of the two Dialogues that follow is the environmental views of the next president. Choosing between them is one of the most important environmental decisions that Americans collectively will make over the next several years.

Editors' Summary: CERCLA authorizes the federal government and states, as guardians of the public trust, to sue polluters to recover damages for injuries to natural resources caused by releases of hazardous substances. These causes of action are governed by the Department of the Interior's natural resource damage assessment regulations, which have recently been challenged in federal court. Critics assail the regulations as strongly biased toward the undervaluation of damaged resources.

Editors' Summary: Although NEPA requires the preparation of an EIS for every major federal action significantly affecting the environment, federal agencies often decide in particular cases that compliance with NEPA is satisfied by preparation of EAs. The decision not to prepare an EIS is usually based on a finding of no significant impact. When an agency's threshold NEPA decision is challenged in court, what is the appropriate standard of review?

When bankruptcy lawyers appear before lay people or other lawyers, we're sometimes looked at the same way as pathologists. We talk about how death is natural and beautiful, but everyone else is somewhat disgusted at how we spend our time. The image of bankruptcy lawyers as pathologists in the minds of most, however, helps to counterbalance the tendency among some bankruptcy judges and lawyers to view themselves not as pathologists but rather as miracle workers, people who can make flowers grow in the desert and bring the dead back to life.

In the sixteen years that have passed since the first Airlie House Conference, concern about preventing hazardous toxic exposures and cleaning up toxic waste sites has steadily increased. In turn, more and more federal and state legislation and regulations have appeared to redress these problems. The costs attendant to both preventive and cleanup costs, however, have become perhaps the most significant financial problem that many companies must face, often posing a threat to their continued viability.

There are about 600 environmental cases pending at the U.S. Justice Department, of which 58 involve bankruptcy issues. Thus, nearly 10 percent of our case docket forces us to confront the interaction of bankruptcy and environmental law.

In response, we have had to hire bankruptcy experts. We now have a senior attorney who is responsible for ensuring that we take consistent positions in all of those cases.