Blog

We asked several of our Member Scholars how the election outcomes will affect policy going forward in our three priority policy areas. Today’s post covers the implications for public protections such as environmental health, clean air and water, and workers’ rights.

For a half century, the Clean Water Act has been the nation's leading water pollution control law. When it passed the modern Clean Water Act in 1972, Congress intended federal and state agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to work together to minimize, and ultimately eliminate, water pollution by 1985. While the country has fallen significantly short in meeting this goal, the Clean Water Act has prevented significant water pollution – and we and our waterways are much healthier for it.

Well over a century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it had power to remedy interstate water pollution. That was in 1901. Six years later, the Court decided its first air pollution case. Notably, these cases came during the conservative Lochner era when the Court was hardly known for its liberalism. Quite the contrary. Yet the Court didn't hesitate to address pollution issues.

From Florida’s sea-battered coast to small mountain communities in landlocked Kentucky, nowhere, it seems, is safe from flooding these days. Even California’s Death Valley — the arid trough in the Mojave Desert known as “the hottest place on earth” — saw record floods this year.  Flooding is, of course, nothing new. The story of human civilization is […]

Last month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released what is almost certainly the best regulatory analysis it has performed in over 40 years. (To be clear, though, the bar for these analyses is pretty low.) More importantly, it provides President Biden with new impetus to finally follow through with the long overdue implementation of his administration’s “Modernizing Regulatory Review” memorandum.

This month, three Member Scholars – Dave Owen, Rob Fischman, and Rob Glicksman – take center stage in the latest edition of Land Use and Environment Law Review (LUELR), an anthology of last year’s best writing on environmental law. In August, Member Scholar Rebecca Bratspies, earned the 2022 International Human Rights Award from the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law, and […]

As Cole Porter crooned in 1948, “It’s too darn hot.”  California and other parts of the American West are heading into another week of excessive heat that not only threatens public health and safety but also power shortages, which would cut millions off from the energy they need to fuel their lives. Workers, particularly those […]

The founding of the United States was far from perfect, reflecting the deep flaws and exploitative practices of the founders themselves. But there was one thing they got right: They created a government charged, in part, with protecting the general welfare. That includes you, me, the American people writ large, and our environment. We at […]

At the end of August, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a draft rule to better protect people who live near industrial facilities with hazardous chemicals on site. The rule would strengthen EPA’s Risk Management Program (RMP), which regulates more than 12,000 facilities in the United States that store, use, and distribute significant amounts of dangerous chemicals.