Supreme Court

Will Regulatory Takings Always Be A Mess?

Takings law is a legal quagmire. It’s likely to stay that way.

I recently reread an article that my late colleague Joe Sax published exactly fifty years ago.  It’s a striking piece of scholarship, all the more impressive so early in his career. But one particular statement made a particular impression on me: “Nevertheless, the predominant characteristic of this area of law is a welter of confusing …

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Is Missouri v. Holland in the Court’s crosshairs?

Justices look for limits on Treaty Power in domestic dispute case

The headline environmental cases at the Supreme Court this term are of course about the Clean Air Act, specifically about its application to cross-state pollution (as Dan has explained here) and to greenhouse emissions (as Ann has addressed here and here). But sometimes cases that at first glance seem wholly unrelated to the environment could …

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More Musings on the Cert Petition Grant in the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Case

Does Regulating Greenhouse Gases Lead to Absurd Results and What Happens Once the Court Rules?

In follow up to my early morning post of this morning, here are a couple of additional points. 1)  A related but different argument petitioners are making about why the PSD provisions don’t apply to the regulation of greenhouse gases is that the application of the provisions would lead to absurd results.  The absurd results …

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Still Waiting For Supreme Court Decision on Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cert Petition

We May Learn This Week Whether Court Takes Up Important Climate Change Case

Court watchers are still waiting to learn whether  the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the  second most important federal case involving greenhouse gas emissions,  Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA.   The Court is closed today for a federal holiday (not because of the shutdown) but any day we should hear about whether it will take …

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In Praise of the 9-0 Supreme Court Loss: LA Port’s Clean Trucks Program lives on

If you’re an environmental group and you find yourself in front of today’s Supreme Court, in some sense you’ve already lost. Nothwithstanding the 2007 Mass v EPA victory for climate change regulation, the Supremes tend not to look kindly, lately, on environmental interests. (Richard Lazarus has argued that the record of NEPA losses at the …

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What’s holding up the Clean Water Act jurisdictional guidance?

Cross-posted on CPRBlog. People on both sides of the political spectrum agree that the boundaries of federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act are murky, to say the least. But efforts by EPA and the Corps of Engineers to clarify those boundaries have been tied up in the White House for more than a year, …

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The Roberts Court’s Corporate Romance

Forty years ago, before going on the Supreme Court, Lewis Powell wrote a call to arms for business interests, calling on them to counter “enemies of the free enterprise system” like Ralph Nader.  Among other things, he recommended a concerted campaign to influence the courts.  The campaign seems to have been a success. The NY Times …

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Guest Blogger Miriam Seifter: The Environmental Dimension of American Trucking

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard argument in American Trucking Associations, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles, a case addressing the preemptive scope of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA).  Over at Scotusblog, I’ve discussed the two relatively technical questions presented in the case.  The first asks whether two provisions in the Port of …

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OT 2012 and the Environment

This Supreme Court Term features a number of environmental cases.  We’re now about two-thirds of the way through the Term, so I thought it might be helpful to post a summary of the cases.  My impression is that the Court is interested in environmental law to the extent that it seems to impinge on the …

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Whale Wars in the Courtroom

Earlier today, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an anti-whaling activist group—and the only environmental group with its own reality television series—petitioned the nation’s highest court. In its petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, Sea Shepherd seeks review of a December 17, 2012 injunction from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski that prevents the Sea …

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