Year: 2014
Thom Tillis, the GOP Establishment, and the Environment
Tillis is not a Tea Party extremist on regulatory issues, but he’s also been no friend of environmental protection .
Thom Tillis’s victory in the North Carolina primary for U.S. Senate was widely seen as a victory for the Republican Establishment over the Tea Party. What does this mean on environmental issues? In other word, where do “Establishment Republicans” stand on the environment? In Tillis’s case, lowering regulatory costs seems to be the highest priority. …
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CONTINUE READINGAn Opening for Climate Adaptation?
Marco Rubio seems willing to admit that climate change exists and is causing real problems. That’s a start.
During an interview with ABC’s Jonathan Kent, Marco Rubio made a very interesting statement about climate change. He took the standard anti-science position about the causes of climate change. “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,” he said. He went on …
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CONTINUE READINGEmissions Trading and the Supreme Court
Advocates of cap-and-trade should find support from the Supreme Court’s opinion in the cross-state pollution case.
In a number of areas, including climate change regulations, a key question is EPA’s power to control compliance costs. A particularly important method is the use of cap-and-trade systems. For instance, there has been considerable discussion of whether EPA could authorize states to use cap-and-trade to control greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, as opposed …
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CONTINUE READINGJustice Scalia’s Puzzling Dissent
Justice Scalia’s dissent in EME Homer contains a number of unusual lapses in substance and tone.
As I’ve been studying the opinions in EME Homer, I’m increasingly struck by the oddities of Justice Scalia’s dissent. There was a flap last week about his blunder, later quietly corrected, in describing one of his own past opinions. But that’s not the only peculiarity of the dissent. As a quick reminder, EME Homer involved EPA’s effort to deal with interstate …
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CONTINUE READINGNot nonsensical at all
The main State Capitol columnist for the Sacramento Bee wrote a piece today on whether California should encourage or discourage additional oil development in the state. This has been a major debate politically, with Governor Brown resisting calls by many environmental groups to ban fracking. Brown has noted the potential economic benefits from tapping into …
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CONTINUE READINGA summer course for foreign lawyers interested in US environmental law
This summer Berkeley Law is providing an exciting opportunity for lawyers around the world who are interested in learning more about US environmental law. Our seventeen-day course in late June and early July provides a thorough grounding in all the major issues in US environmental law (ranging from air pollution to natural resources, water rights …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat’s in a Name?
Supreme Court arguments surround the policies and effects of limitations periods
A few weeks back, I posted about CTS Corp. v. Waldburger, a case then awaiting oral argument in the Supreme Court. As you may recall (or as you can read here, with links to relevant documents), Waldburger involves hazardous waste contamination, and a provision of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) that …
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CONTINUE READINGTurning Water Into Wine: An “Unreasonable Use” of Water in California?
Pending Litigation Likely to Affect Scope of California Constitution’s Ban on Waste & Unreasonable Use of Water
Today a California appellate court in San Francisco heard arguments in a case that is likely to affect how broadly–or narrowly–California’s State Water Resources Control Board can apply the state’s most powerful water law. The case, Light v. California State Water Resources Control Board, involves a challenge by wine grape growers in the Russian River watershed …
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CONTINUE READINGQuantifying Environmental Justice (& Injustice) in California–An Update
California Improves an Already-Powerful Environmental Justice Analytical Tool
A year ago, I wrote about an important environmental justice initiative pioneered by the California Environmental Protection Agency and its subsidiary entity, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. That 2013 initiative, titled CalEnviroScreen, divided up the State of California by zip code, applied 11 environmental health and pollution factors, assessed each of the state’s …
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CONTINUE READINGRichard Lazarus Formally Notified the Supreme Court of Scalia’s Error
Letter Led to Change in Dissenting Opinion
Who knew that the U.S. Supreme Court has a formal process for notifying it about errors in Court opinions? Richard Lazarus, the Howard and Katherine Aibel Professor of Law at Harvard and Supreme Court expert extraordinaire, that’s who. Turns out that after he discovered Justice Scalia’s error about Whitman v. American Trucking (see my earlier post of …
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