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Originally published by The George Washington Law Review. Reprinted with permission. Imagine a world in which administrative agencies whose actions are challenged in court are afforded little respect and even less deference from reviewing courts. Imagine further that congressional efforts to vest authority in these agencies to act as guardians of public health and safety, […]

Originally published by The Conversation. The Trump administration's push to boost fossil fuel extraction has received a major setback. On March 29, Judge Sharon Gleason of the U.S. District Court for Alaska ruled invalid Trump's order lifting a ban on oil and gas drilling in much of the the Arctic Ocean and along parts of […]

This op-ed originally ran in The Hill. Last month, two Inspectors General issued scathing reports about their departments' behavior. The Justice Department's IG got all the attention, while largely overlooked was a disturbing report from the Interior Department IG, who concluded that the agency had no reasonable rationale for halting a major study of the health risks of […]

Originally published by the George Washington Law Review How should a court assessing a regulatory takings claim define the “property” allegedly taken to assess the degree of the economic impact the regulation has on it? That question has plagued the Supreme Court for nearly a century, with different and conflicting answers emerging, sometimes in relatively rapid […]

Donald Trump's antagonism toward environmental and natural resource protections seems to know no bounds, legal or otherwise. Among his latest targets are our national monuments, which include some of the most beautiful and historically, scientifically, culturally, and ecologically important tracts of federally owned lands. During the reign of destruction the president has unleashed in his […]

In his first speech upon assuming his duties as EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt informed the agency’s employees that “regulators exist to give certainty to those that they regulate.” No, Mr. Pruitt, they do not. Regulators and the regulations they are responsible for adopting and enforcing exist to protect the public interest. In particular, they exist […]

Imagine you come across a colleague sitting at his desk amid piles of yellowed papers. When you ask what he is working on, he says it’s his annual family budget. “What’s with all the old papers?” you might ask. “Oh,” he replies, “I always work my new budget off my receipts and bills from 1983, […]

Rep. Ryan Zinke, a congressman from Montana and Donald Trump’s pick for the next Secretary of the Interior, said some encouraging things in his Senate hearing on January 18. First, he acknowledged that the climate is changing and that “man has had an influence,” disavowing Trump’s notorious statement that climate change is a hoax. Second, […]

The most important lessons can be the hardest to learn. Sometimes they even take a crisis. We can hope that the sorry saga of Flint, Michigan’s lead-poisoned water will be such a teachable moment for at least some of the anti-government crowd, finally driving home the point that government has a vital role in protecting […]