Federal dams have been the focus of major disputes involving application of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), especially its §7 prohibitions on federal actions causing jeopardy to protected species. Operating agencies and project beneficiaries have sought to keep the ESA from restricting dam operations, including by arguing that such operations are non-discretionary and thus exempt. In proposing new ESA implementing rules, the Trump Administration suggested, but did not formally propose, that ongoing federal actions should be considered part of the “environmental baseline” for §7 purposes.

Economywide legislation to address climate change will be ineffective unless it addresses greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and land use. Yet incorporating these sectors into the most popular policy proposal—a carbon tax—carries legal risk that policymakers and legal commentators have ignored. This Article explores whether a carbon tax, as applied to agriculture and land use, is a direct tax within the meaning of the Constitution; it concludes that text, history, and Supreme Court precedent up through National Federation of Independent Business v.

Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation in the United States have remained persistently high. One cause is common low-density land use patterns that make most Americans dependent on automobiles. Reducing these emissions requires increasing density, which U.S. local government law makes difficult to achieve through the political process. Mount Laurel, a 1975 New Jersey Supreme Court case that addressed an affordable housing crisis by restraining local parochialism, provides a potential solution.

As human populations have more than doubled since 1960, pressure on wild fish stocks has increased dramatically. This Article argues that the establishment of an electronic reporting and monitoring regime in U.S. fisheries is both necessary to ensure compliance with statutory imperatives to manage them according to best available science, and essential for continued long-term viability of the U.S. fishing industry.

Limiting future temperature increases and associated climate change requires immediate action to prevent additional carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere and to lower the existing atmospheric carbon dioxide load. This could be advanced through carbon capture and storage (CCS), which involves collecting carbon dioxide that would otherwise be released by power plants or similar facilities and injecting it into underground geologic formations, where it will remain permanently sequestered.