Volume 50 (2023)

Ecology Law Quarterly’s Annual Symposium is a forum for leading voices in environmental and energy law, policy, and advocacy. The 2023 Annual Symposium explored the challenges and opportunities of rural lawyering. The event highlighted the unique environmental and social issues faced by rural communities.

The first panel of Ecology Law Quarterly’s 2023 Annual Symposium was entitled “Effects of the Energy Transition on Rural Legal Work.” The moderators were Katalina Hadfield, Christina Libre, Anna Goldberg, and Sabrina Ashjian. Speakers included Mary Cromer, Tanmay Shukla, and Samantha Ruscavage-Barz.

The second panel of Ecology Law Quarterly’s 2023 Annual Symposium was entitled “Effects of Climate Change on Rural Legal Work.” The moderators were Sabrina Ashjian and Katalina Hadfield. Speakers included Estella Cisneros, John Meyer, and Kevin Hamilton.

The penultimate session of Ecology Law Quarterly’s 2023 Annual Symposium was entitled “Individual Presentations from Speakers on Environmental Law in Rural Communities.” The moderators were Anna Goldberg and Christina Libre. Speakers included Kevin Hamilton, Mary Cromer, and John Meyer.

This is the culminating panel of Ecology Law Quarterly’s 2023 Annual Symposium entitled “Working and Organizing within Rural-Facing Public Interest Work.” The moderators were Anna Goldberg and Christina Libre. Speakers included Tanmay Shula, John Meyer, Mary Cromer, Samantha Ruscavage-Barz, and Estella Cisneros.

Articles Making Climate Pledges Stick: A Private Ordering Mechanism for Climate Commitments, by Oren Perez & Michal P. Vandenbergh Just Regulation: Improving Distributional Analysis in Agency Rulemaking, by Richard L. Revesz & Burçin Ünel The Exclusion of Environmental Justice and Race in Environmental Law Casebooks, by Helia Bidad Climate Change ...

Corporate climate commitments are an important part of the global response to climate change, but critics have warned that many of these pledges constitute empty commitments whose credibility is difficult to assess at best. This Article proposes two new financial instruments that address a core climate and corporate governance concern ...

Taking account of the impacts of government action on historically marginalized and overburdened communities is a core policy goal of the Biden-Harris Administration. In this Article, we seek to understand the shortcomings of current agency practice and outline what agencies can do better.

The practice of environmental law today is increasingly attentive to environmental justice, and interest in centering environmental justice in the practice of environmental law has only grown in more recent generations of environmental law students. This Article represents the first critical environmental law casebook review in three decades and is ...

This Article reviews this history and its role in the passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970. This history has important implications for the scope of EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act in light of the Court’s articulation of the major questions doctrine in West Virginia v. EPA.

Foreword Becky Hunter & Grayson Peters Articles A California Environmental Court to Adjudicate Climate Change, by Becky Hunter Protecting Species and Timber Communities from Extinction: A Case Study on Spotted Owls, Logging, and Cooperative Management in Western Lane County, Oregon, by Sierra Killian Closing the Ocean Fracking Gap: EPA Leadership ...

Climate change creates mitigation and adaptation needs across the country, especially in California, which faces flooding, erosion, fire, and extreme weather. To armor against the rising tide of climate change and its accompanying flood of litigation, California should create a specialized environmental court to adjudicate state climate issues.

This Note uses western Lane County as a case study to diagnose sticking points in conservation under the ESA and prescribe characteristics of management strategies more likely to sustain both resource extraction-dependent communities and populations of listed specie

This Note explores how fracking has slipped through the cracks in a closely regulated industry. Examining the root of the problem, this Note outlines how we might design an administrative apparatus to address emerging environmental harms in the context of aging oil and gas infrastructure.

CAISO provides many benefits to Californians, but a West-wide RTO could provide even more. The urgent need to garner new sources of renewable electricity generation necessitates that California facilitate the creation of a regional grid operator that can effectively promote the development of new, green transmission lines.

To fulfill its statutory mandate under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should provide information about risk factors for developing cancer, both in terms of individual risk profiles and making the results of the registration and re-registration reviews more accessible to the ...

EPA’s unambiguous duty to consider alternatives can be a forceful tool to cancel duplicative, hazardous pesticides. EPA should take advantage of that authority to protect unsuspecting consumers from pesticides that can be easily replaced by less harmful ones.

This Note demonstrates that the Court’s surface water equitable apportionment doctrine, which primarily protects established uses, is insufficient to protect interstate groundwater resources.

Although solutions that curb whiplash are hard to come by in a country characterized by an increasingly polarized electorate, this Note suggests several avenues to consider within the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

This Note examines the fate of Proposition 65 in the aftermath of California Chamber of Commerce v. Council for Education & Research on Toxics, a 2022 Ninth Circuit case that affirmed a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the acrylamide cancer warning.