Issue 2

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.

Cost Benefit Analysis is indeed irredeemably biased against climate action. It is also a fundamentally arbitrary metric to judge climate regulations aimed at preserving human health, safety, and the environment, and one which undermines the federal government’s stated commitment to environmental justice. The way forward is not better cost-justification of ...

Cumulative impact analysis (CIAs) under NEPA and CEQA are currently flawed. However, with the above amendments to NEPA and CEQA’s CIA frameworks, government agencies’ EAs of projects, such as the Project in San Bernardino, will be better positioned to consider and prioritize environmental justice concerns moving forward.

USDA’s ability to mitigate climate change through commodity subsidy programs exemplifies an area where bold, agency-led climate action is still possible, even after West Virginia.

United States v. Evergreen Resource Recovery, LLC shows the Fifth Circuit’s willingness to expand Seventh Amendment rights for jury trials to corporations under statutory claims. Finding a Seventh Amendment right for defendants under the Oil Pollution Act has potential implications for higher government expenditures, for greater outcome biases that may ...

This article discusses CLF v. Exxon Mobil, which limited agency deference by restricting the Doctrine of Primary Jurisdiction’s scope of application. It exposes issues beyond the simple adjudication of disputes and raises broader administrative and constitutional law questions.

The Fifth Circuit’s recent decision in Trafigura makes it more difficult for environmental agencies to force polluters to pay for the damage that their businesses cause. The court’s reasoning has broad significance because it restricts the use of excise charges to remediate environmental dangers at home if the good in ...

California Renters remains the gold standard for interpreting the HAA with its strict “reasonable person” standard and pro-housing bias. However, it remains to be seen whether the HAA can stand up to the delays, cost overruns, and outright project denials caused by California’s environmental review process under the California Environmental ...

Senate Bill 54 (SB 54), or the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, was signed into California state law in June of 2022 to both applause and criticism. This In Brief highlights many of the most pungent vulnerabilities and loopholes present in SB 54 that may lead to ...

Tort claims and toxic tort claims have long been a vehicle to address the gaps left by statutes. Butler v. Denka is one such case, and raises a fundamental question: can citizens successfully sue a factory that caused multiple cancer illnesses in their community by emitting excessive pollution?