Academia

Whoops, We Almost Forgot to Ask You For Money!

In otherwise grim times, Berkeley & UCLA are supporting California’s forward environmental progress.

Unlike a lot of blogs, we don’t plague you with requests for money.  But it’s that time of year And this is your last chance for a deductible 2016 gift to support positive change in a really negative time for our country. Legal Planet is a joint product of the Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, …

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Update on the Litigation Over EPA’s Rule Controlling Greenhouse Gas Emissions from New Power Plants

UCLA Faculty File Amicus Brief on Behalf of Technological Innovation Experts

Late in 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency issued New Source Performance Standards to control greenhouse gas emissions from new and modified fossil-fuel-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act. This regulation is a companion to the more-often-discussed Clean Power Plan rule, which addresses greenhouse gas emissions from existing sources in the power generation sector. Last …

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Surveying Climate Change Law

In only 25 years, a dynamic new field of law has taken root.

Climate Change Law, the first volume of Elgar’s Encyclopedia of Environmental Law has just appeared.  There are a number of excellent edited collections about aspects of climate change law. What distinguishes this one is that breadth of the coverage, including both international and domestic aspects of carbon reduction and adaptation to climate change. The book confirms how quickly climate change …

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Great environmental law scholarship

Some of the best articles in the field from 2014-15

Some of our readers may be interested in what is happening in environmental legal scholarship.  So I thought I’d post about the Land Use & Environment Law Review, which is Thomson Reuters/West Publishing’s peer-selected annual compendium of significant legal scholarship in land use and environmental law.  About sixty reviewers (made up of environmental law professors) …

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What is the Price of Equality?

Do Local Land Use Regulations Violate the Fair Housing Act?

One of the great things about studying land use is that it comprises so much of modern life. That creates some disciplinary problems: one UCLAW colleague who shall remain nameless (but comes from Pennsylvania) told me several years ago that he didn’t think land use was part of environmental law at all. (He has since …

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Upcoming Regulatory Takings Conference 2016

Nation’s Top Annual Takings Event Set for November 4th in New Orleans

One of the most important issues in modern environmental law and policy is the extent to which constitutionally-protected property rights limit environmental regulatory programs at the federal, state and local levels.  Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court has focused more attention on this question over the last four decades than any other aspect of modern environmental …

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Beyond Administrative Law

Law students need to know about more than administrative procedure and judicial review.

Since the days of Felix Frankfurter, the Administrative Law course has been a staple of American law schools.  It’s a great course, but it’s limited.  The same is true of most of the courses on legislation and regulation in the first year, which also focus on how courts interpret statutes and how they review administrative …

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Citations for environmental and energy law professors

The most-cited environmental and energy law professors in 2010-2014

Brian Leiter at Chicago is doing one of his occasional series identifying the top cited legal scholars in a range of substantive areas.  One list he has done covers administrative and environmental scholars – however, his list includes a number of top administrative law scholars who do not focus on environmental and energy law.  I …

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UCLA Law and Berkeley Law Are Recognized Among Top Five Environmental Law Programs in New U.S. News Rankings

Environmental Law Programs Thrive in California’s Public Universities

I’m pleased to report that the environmental law programs at both UCLA Law and Berkeley Law are among the top five in the country, according to the new U.S. News and World Report law school specialty ranking for this year.  Berkeley is ranked #4, and UCLA is ranked #5.  (Technically, there are six top-five schools, …

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500 Points of Light

How do law schools promote environmental law? Let me count the ways.

My favorite Sesame Street character is the Count.*  Like him, “I love to count Things.”  A list of law school programs in environment and energy law, recently compiled by Ed Richards at LSU,  gave me the opportunity to do just that.  Here are some of the things that I counted: 39 environmental law clinics 40 LLM …

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