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Showing 2,834 results

Martha McCluskey, Sidney A. Shapiro | October 18, 2018

The Hill Op-Ed: As Hurricanes Expose Inequalities, Civil Courts May Be ‘Great Equalizer’

This op-ed originally ran in The Hill.  While hurricanes like Florence are technically “natural” disasters, the Carolinas are experiencing the ways that the distinctly human-made problems of social and economic inequality reinforce and aggravate storm damage. Exhibit A is the catastrophic breaches and spills from the enormous manure “lagoons” located on North Carolina’s many factory-scale hog […]

James Goodwin | October 17, 2018

Trump’s Fall Anti-Safeguards Agenda: No Country for Young Children

The Trump administration's Fall 2018 regulatory agenda dropped late last night, and as with previous iterations of this preview of what's to come on the regulatory front, it is chock full of numbers – at least the kinds of numbers partisan ideologues and regulated industries care about. But what these numbers don't reveal are the […]

Daniel Farber | October 17, 2018

‘National Security’ Coal Bailout Collapses

Cross-posted from LegalPlanet. In its desperate effort to save the failing American coal industry, the Trump administration promised to use emergency powers to keep coal-fired power plants in operation even though they're not economically viable. That would have been the kind of disruptive change that Trump promised to bring to Washington. But the effort seems to […]

Joel A. Mintz | October 16, 2018

Justice Delayed: Mercedes-Benz’s Diesel Pollution Remains Unprosecuted

To serve the cause of justice, law enforcement must be prompt, even-handed, and appropriate to the circumstances of individual cases. In their handling of an important recent pollution case, however, the enforcement activities of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) have been none of those things. The case involves the […]

Rena Steinzor | October 11, 2018

The Major Rules Doctrine — A ‘Judge-Empowering Proposition’

This post was originally published as part of a symposium on ACSblog, the blog of the American Constitution Society. Reprinted with permission. Now that they have a fifth vote, conservative justices will march to the front lines in the intensifying war on regulation. What will their strategy be? Two tactics are likely, one long-standing and […]

Lisa Heinzerling | October 11, 2018

Taming White House Review of Federal Agency Regulations

This post was originally published as part of a symposium on ACSblog, the blog of the American Constitution Society. Reprinted with permission. Presidents since Ronald Reagan have, by executive order, required agencies to submit significant regulatory actions to the White House for review. Academic and public interest observers have variously criticized this review as slow, […]

Joseph Tomain | October 10, 2018

EPA’s Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) Rule: Putting Money on ACE Is a Bad Bet — Part II

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. If you've been reading this blog or otherwise keeping up with environmental law, you've probably heard this a hundred times: In rolling back Obama's signature climate regulation, the Clean Power Plan, the Trump administration is relying on the idea that EPA's jurisdiction stops at the fence line. That is, according to the Trump folks, EPA can impose measures on each plant, but not measures that go beyond the fence line like requiring more use of renewable energy of a coal or natural gas generator. I've blogged previously about why this argument might not even apply because reducing your operating hours is something you can accomplish without getting close to the fence, let alone crossing it.

Daniel Farber | October 8, 2018

Progressive Regulatory Reform

This post was originally published as part of a symposium on ACSblog, the blog of the American Constitution Society. Reprinted with permission. Until recently, you could be a very well-informed American – a lawyer, even – without ever having heard of the Chevron doctrine. That has changed enough that last month, The New Yorker had […]

Joseph Tomain | October 8, 2018

The EPA’s Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) Rule: Putting Money on ACE Is a Bad Bet — Part I

This post is the second of a pair on the Trump administration's so-called "Affordable Clean Energy" (ACE) rule. You can read the first post here on CPRBlog.