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As part of its aggressive campaign to “deconstruct the administrative state” on behalf of the Trump administration, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency controversially outsourced many crucial tasks to artificial intelligence (AI) programs like ChatGPT. In one episode, the program flagged funding for research on plastics industry lobbying and for digitizing audio reels by the Boston Symphony Orchestra while searching through National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants to eliminate those supposedly promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. Despite such glaring errors, DOGE fully adopted ChatGPT’s recommendations to terminate over 1,400 grants. These errors illustrate two intrinsic problems with AI: hallucination (an AI system producing nonsensical or inaccurate outputs) and sycophancy (an AI system modifying its response to align with users’ views). With AI use likely to become more prevalent within the federal government, existing legal safeguards — including those supplied by administrative law — will need to be updated and adapted to account for these problems.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on October 5 in Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County. At issue is whether the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, can move forward with their state court case against defendants Exxon Mobil Corporation and Suncor Energy for allegedly deceiving the public about their products’ role in climate change. Some three dozen local governments and states throughout the United States have filed similar lawsuits in state court against fossil fuel companies over their alleged deception and false advertising. Although none of these cases have yet gone to trial, the Supreme Court decided to review Boulder’s case at the request of the oil company petitioners.

This past summer, the United States endured a string of climate change-linked heat waves, contributing to an estimated 70 deaths and wrecking food production at farms and ranches across the country. Wildfires, many amplified by climate-driven changes in weather patterns, have already burned 8.4 million acres of land — an area larger than the state of Maryland — destroying homes and other property and subjecting tens of millions of Americans to hazardous air pollution. With disasters like these, it is easy to see how various studies have pinned the average household cost of climate change at well over $1,000 per year. If the oil and gas industry has its way at the U.S. Supreme Court, those households — rather than Big Oil itself — will continue footing that bill.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently cleared the way for President Donald Trump to keep building his garish ballroom, complete with gilded columns, gold chandeliers, and a “drone-proof” roof. The decision might look like a one-off fight over historic preservation, but some legal scholars fear the blast zone is much wider. The real question is more fundamental: who gets to ask a federal court to stop an allegedly unlawful project?

Teaching Environmental Law in Context is a fantastic resource, not only for law professors, but for professors of environmental studies and other adjacent fields. I can’t begin to tell you all the number of times that my colleagues at the University of Wisconsin Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies (as well as colleagues in Environmental Science, Community and Environmental Sociology, and Geography) have asked for a primer like this with respect to environmental law. I am asking our library to get this book right now.

On August 5, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided Committee for a Better Arvin v. EPA, which is both a significant air pollution case and an interesting case study in how the U.S. Supreme Court has changed judicial review of agency actions. The case was brought by a group in Arvin, California, a small city near Bakersfield.

This is a hard moment for the work we care about. The rules that keep our air breathable, our water clean, our workplaces safe, and our government answerable to the people are under real pressure. Agencies are losing the authority to do their jobs. The idea that government should protect people when markets will not is being treated as if it were up for debate. And the communities that suffer most from pollution, unsafe work, and a warming climate are still the last ones invited into the rooms where the choices get made. I spent my childhood two blocks from a power plant grandfathered out of Clean Air Act protections in Texas and suffered from chronic bronchial infections while multiple family members and friends managed asthma. In law school, I learned to value the regulations and bureaucracy that could be made to protect people’s lives. So I am honored to join the Center’s work as executive director.

In this post and video, I discuss the 4th of July Clearwater incident in New York Harbor with Dan Farber, a law professor at UC-Berkeley, who specializes in constitutional and environmental law.

As the United States reaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we at the Center for Progressive Reform find ourselves reflecting on a history that is both extraordinary and in progress. We also recognize that this anniversary carries different meanings for different people. Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward, puts it […]