Region: National
How We Teach Environmental Law is Changing
UCLA Law faculty talk about how they are teaching environmental law differently in challenging times.
Environmental law is still relatively new and keeps changing all the time. After all, the field of environmental law didn’t really exist in the U.S. until pollution fears in the 1950s and ’60s spurred political activism. From 1970 to 1978, Congress passed more than a dozen of the most important environmental laws by overwhelming bipartisan majorities. …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Imperious Presidency
Executive Orders by Biden and Trump speak volumes about their perspectives.
It’s not a surprise that Trump has little respect for expertise and immense antagonism toward those he views as his enemies. What’s striking, however, is that way that these attitudes leak into even the most formal government documents, where they shape the official justifications for presidential actions. To borrow a phrase from Justice Scalia, sometimes a wolf comes in sheep’s clothing. But “this wolf comes as a wolf.”
CONTINUE READINGWhich Effects Count?
Conservatives argue that only the effects that they care about should matter.
Not that long ago, conservatives demanded that the government balance costs and benefits. They still do, but with a twist: They demand special limits on consideration of environmental effects. But that makes no sense. Whatever rules we have about costs should apply to all types of costs, and the same with benefits. The result of the skewing the analysis is, not surprisingly, that we get conservative results more often.
CONTINUE READINGStates Should Not Wait to “Make Polluters Pay”
Guest contributors Laura Fox and Doug Kysar write that now is the right time for more states to adopt climate accountability laws, despite ongoing legal challenges.
As states weigh whether to adopt climate accountability legislation like Vermont’s Climate Superfund Act, some are hesitating out of concern that the Second Circuit’s decision in City of New York v. Chevron Corp., 993 F.3d 81 (2d Cir. 2021), dooms such efforts. That concern is misplaced. In fact, now is precisely the time for states …
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CONTINUE READINGWhy Does Misinformation Follow Extreme Weather?
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
Nowadays when an extreme weather event strikes in America, what follows is a secondary emergency in the form of misinformation on social media. We’ve seen it play out after floods and heat waves, but this phenomenon really goes into overdrive after hurricanes and wildfires. A recent report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate looked …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Woeful Economics of a Misguided Rollback
The costs of Trump’s rollback of key climate rules far outweigh any benefits.
Trump’s rollback of regulations limiting emissions from power plants is an economic disaster. According to economists, health damages far exceed savings from lower compliance costs. Just considering health impacts alone, the net cost of the rollback will be $129 billion through 2050. Climate damages add another $148 billion in costs.
CONTINUE READINGDear 2025 1L:
Avoiding a climate disaster isn’t something today’s students can plan on tackling “over the course of their careers.” The most critical time will be the next fifteen years, which means you’ll need to get to work quickly.What we do together between now and 2035 will determine what your lives look like in 2050 and 2080, and what your children and grandchildren will see in the next century. So grab your books, get yourselves ready, and be prepared to head for the trenches when you graduate. No time to waste!
CONTINUE READINGThe Energy Secretary Pushes Pseudoscience
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
Remember alternative facts? That catch phrase from Season 1, Episode 1 where Trump officials lied about the size of his inauguration crowd has now metastasized into a governing philosophy for how federal agencies plan to ignore, and ultimately exacerbate, the climate crisis. Trump 2.0 is pushing alternative science. Late last month, Energy Secretary Chris Wright …
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CONTINUE READINGEmergency Powers Aren’t What They Used to Be
In the post-WW2 era, courts bent over backwards to accomodate emergency actions. Not true today, as Trump is finding out.
In mid-century America, emergency powers were truly potent. But those days are gone. In his two terms as President, Trump has declared 21 national emergencies, including eight since January 20. This glut of “emergencies” can only further discredit the whole concept. He and his advisors seem to see those as creating nearly magical legal powers, allowing them to deport people without hearings, run roughshod over environmental safeguards, and impose tariffs willy-nilly. They are probably in line for a disappointment. Judges are no longer in awe of emergency powers.
CONTINUE READINGHow Trump’s War on Research Hurts the US Economy
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The economic evidence confirms the huge benefits of government support for research.
One of the victims of the Trump Administration has been scientific research, notably including research on the environment, clean technologies, and even public wealth. The government’s own research capacity is under attack from agencies from EPA to NIH, grants to universities have been cancelled, and future funding from agencies like NIH and NSF is in peril. Yet the Administration has given little though about how this effects competitiveness in a high-tech world.
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