Do Law Schools Discriminate Against Conservatives?
Teresa R. Wagner, a conservative Republican who applied for a faculty job at Iowa and was turned down, thinks so: Ms. Wagner, who graduated from the law school in 1993 and had taught at the George Mason University School of Law, was not hired. She sued, alleging discrimination because of her political beliefs. Late last month, a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, ruled that her case should go to trial, ...
CONTINUE READINGAn Economist’s Perspective on Technology Forcing
Matthew Wald reports that companies that supply motor fuel will face million dollar EPA fines for not blending in cellulosic biofuel into gasoline and diesel. What excuse do such sellers make? They say that cellulosic biofuel doesn't exist --- so they can't meet a legal mandate. If the regulator gently nudges the firm to engage in a costly transition to a lower carbon fuel, the firm has an incentive to signal that it is trying hard to meet the regulator's worth...
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Disasters and Regulatory Failures
There is a strong nexus between environmental disasters and regulatory failures. The connection is most obvious for the BP oil spill, where weak regulation contributed to a massive spill whose ecological consequences are not yet completely known. It's also apparent in the reactor melt-down after the recent Japanese tsunami, which has resulted in radioactive releases. Environmental disasters can also cost lives such as those of workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig. ...
CONTINUE READINGCan you stand to hear more about Sackett?
Cross posted at CPRBlog. As usual, I'm behind Rick on commenting on the latest Supreme Court development. (In my defense, it is the first day of classes, although I know that's not much of an excuse.) Unlike Rick, I didn't attend the oral argument (see lame excuse above), but having read the transcript I agree with the general consensus that EPA is going to lose this case. However, I don't agree with Rick's conclusion that "the Sacketts will wind up winning their long...
CONTINUE READINGThey Tripped Through Its Wires
What comes to mind when you hear the phrase, "The Joshua Tree"? I'm just back from a week at Joshua Tree National Park. I was enormously fortunate to attend a fabulous Jewish Wilderness Spirituality program of Torah Trek, the brainchild of Rabbi Mike Comins. Comins' book, A Wild Faith, is the fundamental starting point for examining the connection between religion and wilderness. If you are interested at all in the relationship between nature and spirituality, To...
CONTINUE READINGU.S. Supreme Court Justices Are on USEPA’s Case
You can't blame the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of late for feeling it's under siege. All of the current Republican presidential candidates are regularly excoriating EPA on the campaign trail, and Congress has conducted oversight hearings and threatened all sorts of legislative action designed to clip EPA's regulatory wings. Now the U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to get into the act. The justices heard oral arguments on Monday in the most important environm...
CONTINUE READINGGuest blogger Vera Pardee: Clearing the Runway for Carbon Pollution Reduction — a Better Way to Fly
This post, by Vera Pardee of the Center for Biological Diversity, is part of an occasional series by guest bloggers. In the absence of international agreements on climate change, important state, regional and national efforts are forging ahead on their own to tackle greenhouse gas pollution. Despite the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions, the business-as-usual fossil fuel industry mounts legal challenges to these efforts wherever possible, focusing on claims of l...
CONTINUE READINGRick Santorum: The Second-Most Anti-Environmental Candidate
This is one of a series of posts describing presidential candidate's views. I didn't cover Santorum earlier because his poll numbers were so low, but that has obviously changed. Santorum's website does not have a page dedicated to energy or environment but does make a number of pledges: Rick Santorum is committed to reviving our economy, restoring economic growth, and creating jobs in America again . . . . He also will roll back job killing regulations, restrain our sp...
CONTINUE READINGGlocalizing Garbage
"Glocalize" is a new term for me. I got it from an article in the Economist about garbage. It means "dealing with big global problems through myriad small or individual actions." For instance: The movement complements other efforts such as a United Nations-backed campaign, now in its 19th year, called Clean Up the World. . . . The central team at World Cleanup does not issue top-down edicts; it relies on local groups to direct their litter-blitzes in a way that sui...
CONTINUE READINGCommerce Clause Challenges and State Climate Policy
As Rick previously blogged, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District struck down California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) last month on the grounds that the standard discriminates against out-of -state ethanol producers in violation of the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution. The decision -- Rocky Mountain Farmers Union v. Goldstene -- is likely to be only the first of several court decisions that grapple with the extent to which states c...
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