Who owns the shore of Indiana’s section of Lake Michigan when it is not covered in water—a private landowner or the public? In February 2018, the Indiana Supreme Court held that the state of Indiana retains exclusive title up to the natural ordinary high water mark (OHWM) of Lake Michigan. ...

Beginning in the 1980s, conservation groups began campaigning for the federal government to list the fluvial Arctic grayling—a relative of the salmon that lives only in the cold waters of North America—as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. In 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to ...

For the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a roughly six-hundred-mile natural gas pipeline stretching from West Virginia to North Carolina, a right-of-way to intersect the Appalachian Trail was essential. Although the proposed pipeline crossed below the trail by about six-hundred feet, it would require clearing of trees and plants along its length, ...

The plaintiffs in Pakootas v. Teck Cominco faced a particularly challenging legal problem: not only was a large corporation polluting their local environment, but the corporation was located in Canada, while the plaintiffs lived in the United States. Although a variety of environmental agreements have been struck between the United ...

The Supreme Court of the Netherlands ended 2019 as the first court in history to establish that protection from dangerous climate change is a human right thereby requiring the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to align with internationally recognized climate targets. The State of the Netherlands v. Urgenda Foundation establishes ...

In Virginia Uranium v. Warren, the Supreme Court wrestled with the question of whether Virginia was preempted from banning uranium mining with the goal of preventing milling and tailings disposal, activities that can only be regulated by the Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. While the Court upheld Virginia’s ban, it did ...

For California to meet its climate goals, there must be swift, bold infrastructure changes that facilitate decarbonization of the transportation sector. The California Supreme Court’s decision in Cleveland National Forest Foundation v. San Diego Association of Governments (Cleveland) is a mixed bag for those who would use the California Environmental ...

The United States is drastically behind the rest of the world when it comes to offshore wind energy. With only one offshore wind farm in operation, developers have cited regulatory burdens and excessive litigation as two of the primary constraints on the industry. Currently, these developers must go through several ...