FLPMA
What does UUD mean?
A key legal standard in public lands law is being used by the Trump Administration to stop renewable energy, but in the long run the Administration’s position may advance environmentalists objectives.
Last August, the Secretary of the Interior issued an order that required considering the “capacity density” of an energy source in issuing permits for that energy source on federal land. The order was a blatant effort to stop renewables permitting on federal lands, because the “capacity density” measure the agency used simply looks at the …
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CONTINUE READINGCreating Lease Certainty
There are some steps Congress could take to increase certainty for energy leases on federal lands, but there will be tradeoffs.
As my prior two posts noted, there are substantial legal authorities that allow an executive to suspend or cancel leases for energy development. In the case of on-shore leases, that power might be extremely broad. And with an Administration that appears to use its powers to pursue political grudges and to push the envelope on …
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CONTINUE READINGCanceling Onshore Leases
The executive may have broad authority to cancel onshore leases, perhaps even without compensation. Congress might want to fix that.
My last post covered the likely power that the Administration has to cancel off-shore leases for wind projects – a power that it probably has, if it was to ever get its act together. But even though the Administration has not yet used it, I think it probably has even broader power to cancel leases …
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CONTINUE READINGNational Monuments: a Rebuttal to Commentators who Support Trump’s Actions to Undo Public Lands Protections
This post is co-authored with Sean Hecht. For the past three months, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has been reviewing some of the national monuments designated under the Antiquities Act by Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton. Since the end of last year, we and others at Legal Planet have been writing on the scope …
CONTINUE READINGNew Article Provides In-Depth Analysis of Limits to Presidential Authority Under the Antiquities Act
Analysis By Faculty at UCLA, University of Colorado, and UC Berkeley Concludes that Congress Alone, and Not the President, May Eliminate or Shrink National Monuments
[Updated June 12, 2017 to reflect availability of final published article] Mark Squillace of University of Colorado, Eric Biber of UC Berkeley, my UCLA colleague Nick Bryner, and I have co-authored a short academic article (published in Virginia Law Review Online) about the President’s authority to abolish or shrink national monuments. This article provides detailed historical research and …
CONTINUE READINGEPA (indirectly) wins a turf war
Think the executive branch is one big happy family under the benevolent direction of (any) president? Think again. Power struggles over turf and substantive outcomes are frequent, and success in those struggles depends on a lot more than just who has the ear of the president at the moment. Sometimes it takes litigation, which has …
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