Justice Roberts Relied on Utility Air Regulatory Group in Upholding Obama Subsidies
The Chief Uses Scalia's Words Against Him and I Can't Resist Saying "I Told You So"
Today's opinion in King v. Burwell is a victory for common sense, not to mention for the millions of people who get subsidies under the Affordable Care Act to pay for health insurance. In determining that the subsidies for health insurance extend not only to states that established their own exchanges but also to individuals served by the federal exchange, the Court relied on the overall structure of the statute. It also used language from one of last term's envir...
CONTINUE READINGWhat’s at Stake in Michigan v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court Hazardous Air Pollutant Case?
Decision expected in next few days
Although King v. Burwell (the Affordable Care Act case) and Obergefell v. Hodges (the same sex marriage case) are garnering more attention, sometime between tomorrow and Monday the Supreme Court will also hand down its decision in Michigan v. EPA. In the Michigan case, the Court will decide whether EPA's Clean Air Act rules to regulate hazardous air pollutants from power plants are valid. Observers are speculating that EPA will lose the case because Justice S...
CONTINUE READINGThe Horse Manifesto
"The Law of the Horse" is a disparaging term for a legal field. We should embrace it.
It’s fairly common to refer to environmental law or energy law as being like the Law of the Horse – implying that they are somewhat ersatz legal fields. For those who are not familiar with the reference, The Law of the Horse was apparently the title of a legal treatise that collected all the cases having to do in some way with horses. Given that the cases had nothing else in common except their subject matter, this was an enterprise without much intellectual content....
CONTINUE READINGDrought and the Supreme Court
Does the Court's Decision in the Raisin Case Imperil Water Management?
When I first read Rick's writeup of the Supreme Court's decision in USDA v. Horne, concerning the federal government's Depression-era system of “marketing orders" that required farmers to set aside a percentage of their raisin crop in a government-controlled account, I was worried about water. And that's not just because I always worry about water. Horne turned on whether the federal program is better considered as a physical taking or a regulatory one. That...
CONTINUE READINGBreaking News: Supreme Court Rules Federal Agricultural Program a Taking
Justices Uphold California Raisin Growers' Fifth Amendment Challenge
The United States Supreme Court today ended a David-and-Goliath-style, 10-year legal battle between a pair of California raisin growers and the federal government, declaring that the government triggered a compensable taking of the growers' private property when a federally-controled agricultural board ordered seizure of a portion of their crop. The Court's decision can be accessed here. Chief Justice Roberts' majority opinion found the U.S. Department of Agricultur...
CONTINUE READINGWhy Paris won’t be Copenhagen
Christiana Figueres, head of the UN climate convention, makes the argument at UCLA
As Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change since 2010, Christiana Figueres jokes that it has been her job to "put 195 countries in a better mood" after the overhyped Copenhagen talks in 2009. The Emmett Institute hosted a lunch at UCLA with Ms. Figueres earlier this week, in which she assured California stakeholders that this year's Paris conference, though in some ways similarly hyped, will be different. In Paris, as in Copenhagen,...
CONTINUE READINGDoes Pope Francis Really Hate California’s Cap-And-Trade Program?
Encyclical take a negative view that may be misplaced
As Dan and Jonathan noted, the Pope weighed in on Thursday with strong moral arguments in favor of addressing climate change. But in his landmark encyclical, he apparently bashed cap-and-trade as a means of addressing carbon pollution: “The strategy of buying and selling ‘carbon credits’ can lead to a new form of speculation which would not help reduce the emission of polluting gases worldwide,” Francis wrote in his wide-ranging encyclical on the environment...
CONTINUE READINGReligion’s “Traditional” View: A Friendly Dissent
Faith Has Long Embraced Environmental Values
Dan's nice summary of Laudato Si will be the first of several commentaries on the page. But before we get going, I have to offer a friendly dissent on one aspect of it -- an aspect that unfortunately plays into a lot of discussion of religion. Dan writes that Pope Francis' encyclical seeks to re-read "the traditional assumption that God gave humans unfettered dominion." But there is no such traditional assumption, as I have argued before on this page. Yes, there is la...
CONTINUE READINGCaritas and Climate Change
Pope Francis has linked the issue of climate change with compassion for the global poor.
Laudato Si’, the new encyclical on climate change, is receiving global attention because of its potential impact on political debates over climate change. Part of the Pope's message seems to be based on the idea that humans have a duty to care for natural world, a rereading of the traditional assumption that God gave humans unfettered dominion. Conservative Catholics are likely to feel uncomfortable with that idea. But they may be even less comfortable with anoth...
CONTINUE READINGRepublican Change We Can Believe In
Sen. Bill Cassidy's Bill Would Ditch Wasteful Ethanol Subsidy
As readers of this page know, I am extremely fair and balanced: I criticize each party if it does something wrong, and praise each if it does something right. If one of those parties happens to do wrong things close to all the time, well, that's not my fault. But let us now praise a Worthwhile Republican Initiative: A new Republican bill introduced Tuesday would completely repeal the federal mandate to blend ethanol into the nation’s gasoline supply. Sen. Bill C...
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