The Year of Living Preemptively
Preemption is the question of whether a state's legal rule is invalid because it conflicts with a federal statute. Environmentalists have been particularly concerned about this issue in recent years because state laws are often "greener" these days than federal ones. The Supreme Court has an unusual number of preemption cases on its docket this year. There are five altogether, two of which have already been decided: Bruesewitz v. Wyeth The Court held that design-defe...
CONTINUE READINGToday in Japan
According to CNN, in addition to the loss of life (now confirmed at over 15oo but likely to rise considerably), the economic costs are huge: Losses from the quake, tsunami and fires will total at least $100 billion, including $20 billion in damage to residences and $40 billion in damage to infrastructure such as roads, rail and port facilities, catastrophe modeling firm Eqecat estimated. The Japanese were well-prepared for earthquakes -- much better than the U.S. -- bu...
CONTINUE READINGJapan Nuclear Update
The situation is continuing to deteriorate. The Washington Post's coverage seems to be exceptionally good. Here's their summary of the current situation: Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant haven't found a way to stabilize overheated reactors and feared the possibility of partial nuclear meltdown, which could potentially cause a further release of radioactive material, Japan's top government spokesman said Sunday. Engineers were having trouble, in particular...
CONTINUE READINGFrom the Department of Bad PR
From the Washington Post; "Obviously, any time you have an incident at a nuclear plant that involves any kind of damage or an explosion, it's not good," said Mitch Singer, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying arm. "But in the scheme of things, is it a disaster? We don't think so." It would be fair to argue that future nuclear policy should be not be determined by events at an aging plant faced with an unprecedented earthquake and tsunami. B...
CONTINUE READINGExplosion at Fukushima Daiichi No. 1
The Washington Post reports on an explosion at a Japanese nuclear reactor: In what may become the most serious nuclear power crisis since the Chernobyl disaster, the explosion followed large tremors at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 reactor Saturday afternoon, injuring four workers who were struggling to get the quake-stricken unit under control.... The full extent of the blast remained unclear, but footage on Japanese television showed that the walls of the building housi...
CONTINUE READINGPublic Policy and Those Pesky Smart Meters
The controversy over “smart” electric meters doesn’t want to go away. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the President of the California Public Utilities Commission has directed the Pacific Gas & Electric Company to come back within two weeks with a plan for allowing customers to pay some additional “reasonable” amount for the privilege of not using a meter that communicates with the utility wirelessly. Smart meters, wireless or otherwise, allow t...
CONTINUE READINGDim Bulbs (The Sequel)
I did a post last November about the surprising tea party anger regarding energy-efficient light bulbs. The furor seems to be continuing. Here are some quotes from Republican Senators courtesy of EE News: "People in Idaho are just astonished that the federal government is telling them what kind of light bulb to put in their home," Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) said. "You busybodies always want to do something that tell us how to make our lives better," Sen. Rand Paul (R-K...
CONTINUE READING2010 U.S. Solar Market: $6 billion
In 2010, the U.S. solar market grew 67% to $6 billion. PV installations doubled to 878 megawatts. And still, the U.S. continues to be outpaced by the Germans and Italians, with U.S. market share of PV installations falling to 5% of the global market in 2010. (These facts and figures are from the Solar Energy Industry Association's (SEIA's) 2010 Year in Review. The Executive Summary (pdf) is here.) The key graph, in my opinion, is that of US PV installations. Wi...
CONTINUE READINGNew on Ecology Law Currents
Ecology Law Currents, the online companion to Ecology Law Quarterly, has two new articles: CERCLA’s Unrecoverable Natural Resource Damages: Injuries to Cultural Resources and Services, by Sarah Peterman, arguing that CERCLA does not permit recovery of damages for the loss of "cultural services" performed by injured natural resources, notwithstanding the Department of Interior's contrary interpretation. 7th Annual EJ Symposium — Hungry for Justice: Growing an Eq...
CONTINUE READINGLegal Planet turns two
A year ago, Dan declared March 10 the birthday of Legal Planet. As he explained in that post, the blog's actual birthday is indeterminate, but March 10 is close enough and having put it out there we might as well stick with it. When we launched the blog, none of us were sure how long it would go on, how much we would have to say, or whether anyone would be interested. Since we're law professors, it's probably not surprising that it turns out we like to spout off about a...
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