Administrative Law
Guest Contributors Clara Barnosky, Jane Sadler, Richard Yates, and Zachary Zimmerman: The Biden Administration’s First 100 Days of Reversing Environmental Rollbacks
An Early Analysis of Progress and Priorities in the Executive Branch
In the final months of the Trump presidency, we (a team of students working with U.C. Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE)) compiled a database of over 200 environmental rollbacks enacted during the Trump administration. These rollbacks characterized the administration’s aggressive focus on deregulation of industry and disregard of protections for the …
CONTINUE READINGDo regulators and utility managers have irreconcilable differences or mutual goals?
By Alida Cantor, Luke Sherman, Anita Milman, and Mike Kiparsky
Do regulators and utility managers have irreconcilable differences or mutual goals? By Alida Cantor, Luke Sherman, Anita Milman, and Mike Kiparsky. What do climate change, aging infrastructure, and urban population growth have in common? They all pose major challenges – especially for water infrastructure in the United States. And many utilities are having a …
CONTINUE READINGThe Nondelegation Doctrine and Its Threat to Environmental Law
Here’s what the doctrine means and why it has suddenly become so significant.
If you ask Supreme Court experts what keeps them up at night, the answer is likely to be the non-delegation doctrine. If you are among the 99.9% of Americans who’ve never heard of it, here’s an explainer of the doctrine and what the 6-3 Court might do with it. What’s the nondelegation doctrine? Simply put, …
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CONTINUE READINGExpertise versus Politics Under Biden
Experts will no longer be pariahs under Biden. But will their voices be heard?
One of the abiding issues in governance is the balance between democratic leadership and experts. We don’t want government solely by technocrats. Nor do we want government steered solely by ideology and politics, as under Trump. Biden will be a vast improvement, but there’s still some question about whether he’ll get the balance right. I …
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CONTINUE READINGLiberal Judges Embrace Textualism
Why are these judges suddenly so enthusiastic about Justice Scalia’s approach to reading statutes?
Two of Trump’s major regulatory efforts were recently thrown out by the D.C. Circuit. The liberal judges who wrote the opinions latched onto a conservative theory called textualism, which was most prominently advocated by Justice Antonin Scalia. While judges in an earlier era tried to interpret Congress’s intent in writing a law, textualists focus solely …
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CONTINUE READINGBiden and Regulatory Review
Big changes may be coming to White House regulatory oversight.
President Biden seems to be poised to dramatically change how the White House reviews proposed agency regulations. I argued in a recent post that it would be better to expand the focus of regulatory review beyond cost-benefit analysis to include important values such as social justice and environmental quality. Biden may be moving in that …
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CONTINUE READINGJustice Breyer’s Nuanced Voice for the Environment
Not much for rhetoric, but a reliable vote for environmental protection.
Given Justice Breyer’s announced retirement, it seems like a good time to assess his contribution to environmental law. When Bill Clinton nominated him for the Supreme Court, there was a great deal of uneasiness among environmentalists about Justice Breyer. As an academic, he had sounded a cautious note about government regulation, calling for more deliberation …
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CONTINUE READINGThe CRA is Back in Play
What you need to know about the Congressional Review Act and Trump’s regulatory legacy
This post is co-authored by Beth Kent and Cara Horowitz Last week’s Georgia Senate victories have given Democrats (bare) control of the Senate—and, with it, the potential to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to erase some of the Trump Administration’s regulatory rollbacks. Here are four key things to know about this unique legislative oversight …
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CONTINUE READINGDC Circuit Gets Help from Grid Experts in Vacating ACE Power Plant Rule
The importance of understanding how things work
I’ve seen lots of good analysis already (including this post from Dan) of the DC Circuit’s decision today to invalidate the Trump Administration’s ACE Rule, which governs climate emissions from coal-fired power plants and does essentially nothing to reduce those emissions. It turns out that doing essentially nothing is not enough. There’s a lot to …
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CONTINUE READINGStrategies to Reverse Federal Environmental Rollbacks
Last month, CLEE released a website that compiled over 180 Trump Administration environmental policy rollbacks, from the repeal of the Clean Power Plan to the removal of government climate change websites. We tracked and evaluated these rollbacks based on their environmental, climate, public health, and programmatic impacts; identified the pathway and difficulty of reversal; and …
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