Climate Change and Existing Law: A Survey of Legal Issues Past, Present, and Future (original) (raw)
Related papers
Climate Change and Federal Environmental Law
… Law & Policy, 2007
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Washington College of Law Journals & Law Reviews at Digital Commons @ American University Washington College of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sustainable Development Law & Policy by an authorized ...
2019
From clean air regulations that affect cars and the transportation industry to government subsidies/incentives for renewable energy (solar & wind) to protecting the first amendment rights of scientists and journalists who maintain that climate change really exists and is caused by human activity, the American legal system is an integral part of the response to climate change and the public policy of sustainability and resilience. The importance of legal rules to deal with the threats posed by Climate Change cannot be overstated. At the federal, state and local levels of government regulations reducing air pollution and controlling energy that increases greenhouse gases, taxes on emissions, required insurance on flooding hazards and the like have been enacted to deal with Climate Change by reducing the causes and by adapting to reduce the physical risks to promote resilience. Yet, the U.S. legal systems has limitations that affect the impact. Legislation requires a political situatio...
Environmental Law: The Policy Implications of the Reaction to Climate Change
William Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review, 2009
Law HON. JEFFREY S. SUTTON U.S. COURT OF APPEALS, SIXTH CIRCUIT * Each speaker was provided a copy of the transcript prior to publication and offered an opportunity to make minor edits. Any paragraphs with changes beyond minor edits have been placed in brackets.
Climate Change Litigation: Trends, Policy Implications and the Way Forward
Transnational Environmental Law, 2020
Climate change has evolved from being a controversial issue to a widely recognized global threat over time. The inclusion of climate action as one of the 17 United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals, 1 the conclusion of the 2015 Paris Agreement, 2 and the publication in 2018 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C 3 have forged an agreement among the international community on the causes and risks of climate change. At the national level, a surge of laws codifying national and international responses to climate change has given rise to a growing number of lawsuits around the world on climate change-related matters. 4 The topic of climate litigation has attracted the attention of scholars from across social sciences fields, including most prominently the legal discipline and political science. 5 Legal scholarship on climate litigation covers a broad scope
Civil Litigation as a Tool for Regulating Climate Change: An Introduction
Valparaiso University Law Review, 2012
This essay serves as an introduction to a special issue of the Valparaiso Law Review, dedicated to civil litigation of causes of action to address climate change. Every now and again there is a case that subjects the U.S. Supreme Court to a kind of stress-test. A case that reveals the Court’s willingness to engage tough social issues, or instead kick the can to coordinate branches of government, or to the states. On occasion, an environmental case will push the Court mightily over constitutional issues of standing, political question doctrine, separation of powers, and federalism. The recently decided American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut (“AEP”), for example, is just such a case. Accordingly, this Essay contains a summary of AEP and discusses its implications. It concludes that AEP has had a profound impact on GHG litigation and policymaking, and will be the case of threshold reference on issues of displacement, constitutional and prudential standing, the political question doctrine, and the role of common and statutory law in addressing GHG emissions.
An Introduction to Climate Change Liability Litigation and a View to the Future
2014
This article discusses the advancement of climate change litigation. It explores two approaches to climate change litigation; the first is to use the federal regulatory apparatus and the second is to use the tort system. The article explores key questions in climate change litigation such as, who is responsible for deciding the appropriate level of harmful emissions? How should courts handle the long tail effects of climate change? What are the proper forums to litigate in? And, what is the role of the federal government in climate change litigation? Climate change liability litigation is a United States phenomenon. Though climate related litigation exists in other countries,' more climate change cases have been brought in the United States than in the rest of the world combined, and the United States stands alone in seeing significant litigation that seeks to hold greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters liable for the harms caused by climate change. The first wave of climate liability litigation began in the mid-2000's during President George W. Bush's administration. Frustrated by the absence of a national climate change regulatory scheme in the United States, climate liability litigation began as environmental groups sought to compel policy development through two litigation avenues. One approach was to use the existing United States legal and regulatory apparatus to
PRN: Environmental Ethics, 2007
Although the United States is not a party to the Kyoto Protocol, a multitude of alternative domestic approaches to combat climate change have emerged at all levels of government. The article takes as given that climate change is a serious environmental problem that requires a legal response. Building on conference presentations at a USF symposium in March 2007, this article evaluates the most significant existing federal and state measures, including federal voluntary measures, California's vehicle emissions standards and global warming legislation, and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The article also addresses three litigation initiatives: Massachusetts v. EPA, Friends of the Earth v. Mosbacher, and the states' public nuisance actions against electric utilities and auto manufacturers.The article not only highlights the key features of federal, state, and litigation initiatives; it also addresses their respective roles. In responding to climate change, the nation mus...
Research Handbook on Climate Change Mitigation Law
Research Handbook on Climate Change Mitigation Law, 2015
Eisen CHAPTER OVERVIEW This chapter addresses greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation measures in the US energy sector, and, specifically, those applying to the US electric power industry. The focus is on the systems of federal, state, regional, ~nd local regulation of GHG emissions associated with electricity generat10n, transmission and distribution, concentrating on the regulatory trends likely to have the largest impacts on mitigating GHG emissions. In addition, this section will discuss the extent to which these systems of regulating GHG emissions have evolved over the past decade.
The Legally Disruptive Nature of Climate Change
The Modern Law Review
Climate change gives rise to disputes and problems that are not easily addressed by existing legal doctrines and frameworks. This is because: it is a polycentric problem; the assessment of future climate impacts must deal with uncertainty; climate change is sociopolitically controversial; and addressing climate change requires recognising a dynamic physical environment. As such, climate change can be thought of as legally disruptive in that it requires lawyers and legal scholars to reconcile the legal issues raised by climate change with existing legal orders. The legal disruption catalysed by climate change has not only led to the creation of new legal regimes but also given rise to a multitude of legal disputes that require adjudication. A study of some of these cases highlights the need for active and deliberate reflection about the nature of adjudication and the legal reasoning embedded in it when confronted by a disruptive phenomenon like climate change. Climate change now figures frequently in adjudication. Between 2013 and early 2015, there were over 394 cases in the UK, US, Australia and Canada in which a legal dispute related in some way to climate change. 1 Unsurprisingly, much literature has been written on climate change in the courts: mapping climate change cases and considering how to define the scope