Disaster Law

Can Anyone Stop the Filibuster?

The DC Circuit’s outrageous opinion on Friday essentially banning recess appointments has brought further chaos to the Age of Dysfunction.  Now, President Obama will confront potentially dozens of new filibusters without recourse; it didn’t help that less than 24 hours beforehand, the Senate scotched the efforts at meaningful filibuster reform.  So what to do now? …

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New Symposium on Disaster Law

The Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum has just published a great symposium on disaster law.  The authors include some leading lights in environmental law, and for good reason, since disaster issues and environmental law are closely related.  Here are links to all of the individual articles: Articles Introduction: Legal Scholarship, the Disaster Cycle, and …

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Surviving on a Changing Planet

[youtube=http://youtu.be/O5h02Yc6lfA] As this video explains, the Arctic is entering a new state, quite different from the Arctic regime that we have long known.  Over a somewhat longer time frame, much the same is happening with the climate and ecology of the world as a whole. It’s a bit like a science fiction cliché: explorers leave …

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More on BP’s guilty plea: it’s not just about the money

Cross-posted on CPRBlog. As already noted by Rick and Megan, last week BP pleaded guilty to 14 criminal counts arising from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. Megan provided a good basic overview of the terms of the agreement. Here is the plea agreement itself. The amount of money BP has …

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BP Agrees to Plead Guilty to Felony Charges Arising Out of Deepwater Horizon Disaster

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that British Petroleum has agreed to plead guilty to felony charges stemming from the Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 workers and precipitated the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. As part of the plea bargain, BP has agreed to pay the federal government $4.5 billion in penalties, including …

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The Shape of Things to Come

[In line with Jonathan’s graphics theme.]

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Quote of the Day — or the Year — or the Century

Eric Pooley, vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund, on Hurricane Sandy: “We can’t say that steroids caused any one home run by Barry Bonds, but steroids sure helped him hit more and hit them farther. Now we have weather on steroids.” Any questions?           UPDATE: Our commenter and friend Maya …

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“United We Stand”: National Unity in the Face of Disaster

During the Republican primaries, Governor Romney proposed curtailing or even eliminating the federal role in disaster response, leaving the response efforts to the states or the private sector.  Why does this seem viscerally wrong to so many people today (enough so that Romney first refused to answer any questions about it and then abandoned it …

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Redeeming FEMA: How the Agency has Been Strengthened Since Katrina

Today’s FEMA is a lot different from the organization that flubbed the Katrina response.  There have been a number of positive changes, mostly during the past four years. First, as the Washington Post explains, FEMA’s authority has expanded: Congress has broadened FEMA’s authority so that the agency can respond in advance of major storms, instead …

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A Resource on Disaster Law Issues

As the storm slowly passes through, there will inevitably be questions about a host of issues: the scope of FEMA’s role, the requirements of the Stafford Act, the operation of flood insurance, how private insurance might or might not apply, and so forth.  The Berkeley Law School Library has established a great website with copies …

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