Citizen suits are filed disproportionately in a small number of states with robust environmental programs. This bias magnifies disparities across states both directly, by ensuring that standards and procedures are followed in favored states, and indirectly, by driving development with significant environmental impacts towards states in which citizen suits are rare and enforcement is less rigorous.
This Comment provides an empirical snapshot of the environmental legal literature for the 2020-2021 academic year, as well as information on the top articles chosen for re-publication by the Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review (ELPAR), which is published by the Environmental Law Reporter in partnership with Vanderbilt University Law School.
The Iowa Supreme Court, 4-3, affirmed a summary judgment order dismissing a landowner's nuisance, trespass, and drainage claims against a neighboring confined animal feeding operation (CAFO). The neighboring CAFO moved for summary judgment based on the statutory immunity enacted in Iowa's "right-to-...
This Comment is adapted from Chapter 7 in Joshua Ozymy & Melissa Jarrell Ozymy, Toxic Intent: Environmental Harm, Corporate Crime, and the Criminal Enforcement of Federal Environmental Laws in the United States (ELI Press forthcoming 2022).
The Federal Circuit reversed a Court of Federal Claims ruling that the U.S. government was not liable for the flooding of homes near two Houston dams managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during Hurricane Harvey. Property owners downstream of the Addicks and Barker Dams argued that the governm...
The Massachusetts Supreme Court affirmed a lower court's denial of an oil and gas company's motion to dismiss a civil enforcement action brought by the Massachusetts attorney general (AG) based on the company's communications with investors and consumers concerning the impact of climate change. The ...
A district court granted a developer's motion to dismiss a challenge to the Army Corps of Engineers' decision to issue a CWA §404 permit for a proposed copper mine project in the Santa Rita Mountains. Environmental groups and Native American tribes argued that the Corps violated the CWA and NEPA wh...
This Article explores the relationship between state environmental citizen suit provisions and judicial standing requirements, and analyzes whether the introduction of citizen suits into state statutory law inspired increasingly strict state standing requirements, as occurred at the federal level. Specifically, it identifies how state judiciaries have interpreted standing and aggrievement in response to general, non-media-specific citizen suit provisions, both in the common law and in administrative law.
In China, the year 2021 witnessed the further evolution of environmental protection and development of legislation and rulemaking. This included revision of the Law on the Prevention and Control of Noise Pollution and adoption of the Wetland Protection Law, the Regulations on Administration of Pollutant Discharge Permits, Measures for Administration of Carbon Emissions Trading, judicial interpretations on environmental injunctive orders, and some departmental rules. This Comment summarizes some of the year’s major developments.
Recent U.S. presidential administrations have been the apex of what scholars have identified as “the rise of executive-level power, the use of the ‘administrative presidency,’ and the growing democratic deficit.” Indeed, with legislative gridlock in the U.S. Congress that seems to have no end in sight, the use of agencies in the executive branch has been adopted by both political parties as the main vehicle of policymaking. This Comment acknowledges the ongoing regulatory uncertainty in the United States, categorizes it, and explores theoretical frameworks for presidential transitions.