Academia

Time To Rename “Environmental” Law

The label is misleading and inaccurate

Every year in October, the California State Bar Environmental Law Section hosts a three-day conference on the outskirts of Yosemite, attracting prominent lawyers, advocates, and public officials from all over the state. This past weekend, at the traditional Saturday night banquet, famed climate activist Bill McKibben was the speaker. Unfortunately at the last minute he …

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Working-class Environmentalism

New JAH Article Points to Labor Support of Environmental Justice

Traditional histories of the environmental movement consider it to be a middle-class or upper-middle-class concern, removed from the grittier kitchen table issues of concern to working people. Not so, says Josiah Rector, in an article in the new Journal of American History, entitled “Environmental Justice at Work: The UAW, the War on cancer, and the Right …

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What’s a March FOR?

Increase Your Intensity

With all the coverage that the huge (400,000 person) People’s Climate March has received in the media, we still have to ask: what is a march for? How exactly does it fit into a coherent political strategy to combat global warming? You might say that by pointing to the media coverage, I have answered the …

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Guest Blogger David Schraub: Vermont Environmentalists File FTC Challenge over “Double-Counting” RECs

David Schraub is the Darling Foundation Fellow in Public Law at the University of California Berkeley School of Law. Represented by Patrick A. Parenteau and Douglas A. Ruley of the Vermont Law School’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic, four Vermont residents have petitioned the FTC to investigate alleged misleading marketing practices by Green Mountain …

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Faculty Job Openings in Environmental Law

Looking for a job in law teaching? Here’s a list of schools doing searches in environmental, energy, or natural resources law.  I’ll update the list if I hear about additional openings. Alabama is planning to hire at least one junior-lateral candidate or entry-level person this year.  Four subject matter areas are receiving special attention, one …

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A Hidden Property Gem From Justice Jackson

Where Do Property Rights Come From?

Although it is never fun to do new class preparation, I like teaching new classes because it forces me gives me the opportunity to learn new material and new areas of law. So it is this semester, when I will teach water law for the first time. In this case, not only have I learned …

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The Emergence of Climate Law Courses

It’s an increasingly widespread law school course.

The U.S. legal system has only begun to address climate change in the past ten or fifteen years. It was inevitable that this subject would infiltrate basic environmental law courses, especially given that there have now been three Supreme Court cases on the subject.  But climate change is now increasingly the subject of separate courses …

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Back in the Fast Lane

New Pritzker Brief from UCLA Law on Making Public Transit Work

Fellow blogger Ethan Elkind has spent a lot of time researching the history, politics, and future of transit in California.  Earlier this year he published Railtown, a fascinating portrait of the fight over development of the L.A. Metro rail system, revealing the degree to which that development has been driven by good old-fashioned politics and even intrigue …

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A Response to John Nagle: The Clean Air Act as a Whole Supports Climate Regulation

Debating the Relationship between the Healthcare Fight and Climate Regulation

Last week, conflicting federal court decisions regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as the ACA or “Obamacare,” set the nation abuzz. In Halbig v. Burwell, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulation providing federal subsidies to low-income taxpayers who purchase health insurance through a …

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General Permits and the Regulation of Greenhouse Gases

The Supreme Court ignored a major option for effective regulation

Author’s Note:  The following post is co-authored by Eric Biber and J.B. Ruhl, the David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law and the Co-Director of the Energy, Environment, and Land Use Program at Vanderbilt Law School. It is also cross-posted at Reg Blog.  Reg Blog, supported by the U Penn Program on Regulation is an …

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