Legal Planet

DECEMBER 22, 2023

A case decided by the Third Circuit on Dec. That brings me to the intriguing procedural wrinkle in the case. Normally, FERC’s failure to decide wouldn’t be subject to judicial review. It is as if, in case of a tie, the half of the Commission approving of a utility request were empowered to speak for the whole Commission.

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Legal Planet

MARCH 7, 2024

This requires tracing language back to earlier judicial decisions, two sets of CEQ regulations, prior versions of the same bill, and earlier congressional permitting statutes. In a couple of other cases language was cut-and-pasted from regulations but dropped into a different context where it didn’t fit.

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Legal Planet

JULY 18, 2023

The judicial streamlining provisions mean tighter litigation timelines in CEQA cases, which will inequitably disfavor less well-resourced CEQA litigants. The administrative record generally makes up the universe of evidence available to the parties in a CEQA case; and this record can end up being very long.

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Legal Planet

APRIL 2, 2024

The European Court of Human Rights will decide on three contentious cases brought by individual applicants, and the other three courts will issue advisory opinions at the request of different States. But all cases overlap to some degree on the question of the international legal obligations of States in light of the climate emergency.

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Law and Environment

MARCH 5, 2024

As the SJC acknowledged, there are several structural flaws in the statute that are pretty much immune to judicial cure. In short, while I appreciate the SJC’s efforts to fix the statute, the proper metaphor in this case is that of putting lipstick on a pig. Unfortunately, I’m not holding my breath regarding a legislative remedy.

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Environmental Progress

FEBRUARY 29, 2024

On February 8, the Federal Police (PF) initiated an operation based on judicial orders issued by Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Federal Court (STF). The secrecy of most inquiries – kept off the judicial system's digital platforms – means some subjects don't even know the charges against them. Horacio Neiva, a law Ph.D.

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Legal Planet

NOVEMBER 2, 2022

An analysis by two Berkeley Law students finds that they do in a few key areas of judicial decision-making. To identify environmental cases for analysis, we searched the Westlaw database for lead opinions in cases with the “environmental” subject matter keyword during the relevant t imeframes. Download as PDF.

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Law and Environment

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

At the core of the case are allegations that PepsiCo.’s When Congress takes a pass, it’s difficult to complain when those harmed seek a judicial remedy. Whether such litigation succeeds or not, nuisance cases will be more than just a nuisance for defendants. And whether it’s PepsiCo.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

JULY 18, 2023

This report offers a comprehensive synthesis of the latest research and developments in the climate change litigation field and outlines general trends while delving into cases filed within the past 12 months. The report is based on data from the Sabin Center , which has documented 2,341 climate change cases to date.

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Legal Planet

NOVEMBER 21, 2021

As I wrote in a previous post, several well regarded foreign courts have upheld claims that are similar in concept to the Juliana case. Limited conceptions of the judicial role. But the past five decades of judicial evolution created an unwelcoming legal landscape for the bold arguments made in Juliana.

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Law and Environment

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

The case is potentially important for a number of reasons. First, it’s a thorough analysis of standing in cases where the plaintiffs claim a procedural injury – here, EPA’s failure to consult with FWS and NMFS before issuing new recommended water quality criteria. And so we come to my real reason for posting about this case.

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Legal Planet

DECEMBER 28, 2023

In 2019, Westlands filed a “validation” action in Fresno County Superior Court seeking judicial approval of its proposed CVP water delivery contract with the Bureau of Reclamation. California law allows public agencies to seek formal judicial approval of final agency actions.)

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Law and Environment

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

Given the ubiquity of PFAS and the number of cases we’re now seeing where PFAS contamination is alleged to have resulted from air emissions, the issue is likely to arise in other cases. I like to think of this of this as the first example of a fact-finder taking judicial notice of the existence of gravity.

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Legal Planet

JULY 12, 2023

The third one highlights the opportunity for CEQ to shape judicial interpretation of the Amendments, particularly if it can act quickly. Some may have to do so quickly, since the provisions take effect immediately and seem to apply to pending environmental reviews and court cases.

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Law and Environment

AUGUST 15, 2023

In trying to answer that question, it does seem worth briefly reviewing what the case was actually about and what the decision says. The Court relied on the text of Section 1(3) in concluding that Article IX provides a judicial remedy to enforce the protection of Article IX.

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Legal Planet

DECEMBER 15, 2021

Working with Justice Hobbs opened my eyes to the inner workings of the judicial system and expanded my understanding of what pursuing justice can and should mean. . Read more about the case here.) . 1 , the landmark Denver school desegregation case, and retained control over it during and beyond Justice Hobbs’ tenure with him.

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Legal Planet

JANUARY 3, 2024

Summarized below are the cases that the justices have already taken up and will decide this year. (I’ve 22-1074 First up before the Court in 2024 is this “regulatory takings” case from California. I profiled the Sheetz case in an earlier Legal Planet post when the justices granted review in late 2023.

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Legal Planet

MAY 12, 2022

The aggressiveness of the opinion in the Dobbs case signals a kind of activism that is definitely worrisome in other areas. The passage hints at bad faith on the part of the majorities in the cases he cites. Most of the items on the list have no relevance to Dobbs , the case before the Court.

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Legal Planet

AUGUST 10, 2023

These examples highlight two important constraints on rollbacks: the risk of adverse judicial rulings and resistance from industry. The Trump Administration’s litigation record was at best mixed.

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Law and Environment

JUNE 25, 2021

Last week, the 9 th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that EPA’s decision to withdraw its proposed veto of the Army Corps’ Section 404 permit for the Pebble Mine project in Bristol Bay, Alaska, was subject to judicial review. Although there was a dissent and the majority opinion was 39 pages, I don’t think that the case should have been so hard.

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Law Columbia

APRIL 10, 2024

The Court declared the two other cases, Carême v. Klimaseniorinnen : Major Substantive Take-Aways With Klimaseniorinnen, the Court follows in the footsteps of various national courts , most notably the Dutch Urgenda ruling (see also the extensive overview of the domestic case-law in paras. France and Duarte Agostinho and Others v.

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Legal Planet

MAY 16, 2022

Gorsuch may continue to be a bit of a maverick; just this morning he joined the liberals in dissenting in an immigration case. Thomas is clearly the most extremist of the conservatives, seeing no daylight between his judicial decisions and his political and ideological commitments.

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Legal Planet

JUNE 30, 2022

Dan already has a good post up on the basics of the Supreme Court’s ruling today in the climate case West Virginia v. Here are some quick thoughts from my morning’s reading of the case, in which William Boyd, Andria So and I filed an amicus brief on behalf of electricity grid experts in favor of EPA’s position.

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Circle of Blue

JULY 11, 2022

The decision leaves intact the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and even allows it to regulate power plants on a case-by-case basis. The greater significance of the case, rather, may be the new inroad it creates for challenges to environment and water protections.

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Legal Planet

JANUARY 30, 2023

And the year also saw some major judicial decisions. Two judicial decisions that year also stand out as noteworthy. In another notable case, the D.C. The case is one of dozens titled Natural Resource Defense Council v. The first EPA Administrator took office in 1971. Like today, 1973 was a time of political turmoil.

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Legal Planet

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

Here’s a sample that gives a sense of the level of detail in EPA’s discussion, in this case relating to studies using one particular methodol tiogy for estimating PM 2.5 As in previous cases, it has done so by setting the 9 μg/m³ standard a little below the lowest air concentration shown in studies to have produced negative effects (9.3

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Law and Environment

MARCH 10, 2023

First, the decision is a full-throated endorsement of judicial deference to agency decision-making. Of course, this isn’t a Chevron case; it’s not about deference to agency interpretation of its statutory authority.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

OCTOBER 6, 2022

The doctrine is named after the case in which it was first articulated.) The case concerns an Obama administration rule, the Clean Power Plan, that regulated greenhouse gas emissions until it was blocked by a lower court and rendered unnecessary when the power sector achieved the intended emissions reductions without the rule taking effect.

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Law and Environment

APRIL 3, 2023

I’ve blogged numerous times about the role that CASAC recommendations play in judicial review of EPA’s decisions concerning setting the NAAQS. The short version is that setting the NAAQS – any NAAQS – at a level consistent with CASAC’s recommendations is both a necessary and sufficient condition to surviving judicial review.

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Legal Planet

MAY 2, 2022

A Ninth Circuit ruling last week in a case involving bear baiting, Safari Club v. Until the Safari Club case, however, there hadn’t been any judicial rulings on the issue. In some other cases, courts have rejected the argument that in vetoing a federal rule, Congress also indicated disapproval of similar state rules.

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Law Columbia

APRIL 18, 2024

C ategorical differences between KlimaSeniorinnen and Court’s existing environmental case law ‘KlimaSeniorinnen’ had thus exhausted all domestic remedies. This is mainly due to the interplay of climate physics underpinning climate change and the rationale of the judicial process. e.g., Cordella and Others v. 545; see also paras.

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Legal Planet

OCTOBER 10, 2022

Supreme Court will hear arguments in an animal welfare case from California that could have profound, negative impacts on a host of the Golden State’s environmental laws and policies. The case is National Pork Producers Council v. The justices granted certiorari, and the justices are hearing oral arguments in the case today.

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Legal Planet

JULY 24, 2023

So big, in fact, that they may collide with a conservative judicial rule called the Major Question Doctrine (MQD). The MQD is often framed as an attack on the power of bureaucrats, but in every case where it has been used, the policy decision was actually made by the president. He has plans, big plans.

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Law and Environment

APRIL 5, 2023

Such injuries do not flow from the Interim Estimates but instead from potential future regulations, i.e., final rules that are subject to their own legislated avenues of scrutiny, dialogue, and judicial review on an appropriately developed record. EPA , which challenges EPA’s most recent motor vehicle emissions standards.

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Legal Planet

DECEMBER 23, 2022

The district opinion in that case would have been hysterical had it not been so awful. ” Nicholas Bagley said O’Connor’s ruling was “about as naked a piece of judicial activism as I have ever seen; I don’t even think it’s close.” Reasoning was not needed. ” Jonathan H. Adler and Abbe R.

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Law and Environment

FEBRUARY 8, 2023

Here are the significant takeaways: Acknowledging the size and scope of the Thacker Pass mine, it’s clear that this was basically a plain vanilla review, that BLM did a perfectly adequate job assessing its potential impacts, and that the BLM analysis rightly survived judicial scrutiny.

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Legal Planet

OCTOBER 5, 2023

The fate of these measures depends on three cases argued before the D.C. To get a better sense of where the court may be heading, I spoke with Sean Donahue , an environmental lawyer who argued one of the cases and was there for the other two oral arguments. Notably, the car industry itself is affirmatively supporting EPA in the case.

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