Volume 48 (2021)

This year, we are pleased to be publishing the direct transcripts from the Symposium. Our panelists provided a wealth of thoughtful commentary throughout four panels, and we know readers will appreciate the nuance and candor they brought to each discussion.

To understand how well CEQA is addressing wildland-urban interface development, we analyzed data on environmental review for housing projects in three large exurban counties and additional cities with substantial wildland-urban interface areas. Our results indicate that CEQA and local land-use regulation may not be adequately addressing wildland-urban interface development in ...

This Symposium Article focuses on the issue of wildfire emissions from federal forests and the challenges that wildfire emissions, and forests generally, pose for climate policy.

Historically, during times of perceived labor shortages in the U.S. agricultural industry, the federal government has enacted policies to ensure the availability of temporary agricultural guestworkers. The current H-2A Temporary Agricultural Guestworker program has been in place for decades, and its use is expanding rapidly. Yet, policies that guarantee a ...

Is there any escape from the consequences of man’s near-Promethean arrogance with fire? In spring 2021, ELQ and the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment at UC Berkeley School of Law centered this question in a half-day virtual symposium. The event brought academics, students, activists, and regulators into conversation ...

After introducing the challenge of adapting water and energy systems to climate change, this Article synthesizes prior multidisciplinary work on algorithmic decision making and modeling-informed governance—bringing together the works of early climate scientists and contemporary leaders in algorithmic decision making. From this synthesis, this Article presents a framework for analyzing ...

This Article details how the marginalization of transgender people aggravates the environmental harms that they experience, thus demanding the proactive, facilitated involvement of the transgender community in environmental outreach and response. While transgender rights continue to achieve public acknowledgment, transgender people remain almost forgotten in scientific, policy, and legal literature ...

Although the working-from-home transition has been underway for some time, it accelerated dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it may lead to permanent shifts in the workplace for millions of employees. Using an efficiency and justice lens, this Article examines the standards regarding working-from-home emissions and concludes that undercounting could ...

We are honored to introduce the Ecology Law Quarterly’s 2020–21 Annual Review of Environmental and Natural Resource Law. Now in its twenty-second year, the Annual Review is a collaborative endeavor of students and faculty. But the greatest contributors to the Annual Review are Ecology Law Quarterly’s (ELQ) editorial board and ...

In County of Maui v. Hawai’i Wildlife Fund, the Supreme Court held that “the statute requires a permit when there is a direct discharge from a point source into navigable waters or when there is the functional equivalent of a direct discharge.” The Court thus confirmed that some discharges traveling ...

Since their inception, administrative agencies have played a critical role in setting the trajectory of national regulatory schemes. Over the last several decades, agencies have become increasingly responsive to executive policy positions. Though executive control of agency action has long been accepted as a desirable system of accountability, the increasingly ...

In 2015, twenty-one youth plaintiffs and environmental activists caught global attention when they sued the United States government for its complicity in perpetuating climate change. Juliana v. United States was likely the highest- profile climate case yet, and the next year, a federal district court judge ruled that the lawsuit ...

Although wild horses are largely considered non-native species in the American West, their majestic beauty has long captivated the minds of the public. In 1971, rapidly diminishing horse populations led to the enactment of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act (WHBA), to protect wild horses from “capture, branding, harassment, ...

In 2020, the Supreme Court decided Atlantic Richfield v. Christian, a case that asked the Court to reconcile ostensibly competing concerns in the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act: the jurisdictional bar that limits challenges to the Environmental Protection Agency’s ongoing cleanup plans and the savings clause that makes ...

After seven years of organizing, the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition— made up of the Hopi, Navajo, Uintah and Ouray Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Zuni Nations—secured the protection of 1.35 million acres of federal public land within the boundaries of the state of Utah. The land included the twin Bears ...

This is a story of energy and fish, the federal laws that regulate them, and their past and future as resource industries in the United States. United States federal law has long treated our oceans as an endless bounty of natural resources, ready for human extraction, consumption, and exhaustion. But ...

Environment Texas Citizen Lobby v. ExxonMobil reaffirms the age-old adage that Everything is Bigger in Texas. The facts drip with superlatives. Baytown, Texas is home to Exxon’s prized facility, the “largest petroleum and petrochemical complex in the nation.” The plaintiffs—environmental groups suing on behalf of Baytown residents—alleged Exxon committed over ...

It is no secret that the chemicals present in pesticides can damage environmental and human health. Preventing this damage is why the process of registering pesticides is so crucial. In National Family Farm Coalition v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Ninth Circuit Court upheld the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ...

Advisory committees serve vital roles in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal agencies. At EPA, advisory committees review the scientific basis of the agency’s decision making, revise air quality standards, and advise the agency on its research program, among other functions. In 2017, EPA issued a directive titled ...

My decision to write about the Congressional Review Act (CRA) in the fall of 2020 launched the beginning of an academic journey marked by several unexpected twists and turns. I originally chose to write about the CRA because, like many political theorists at the time, I was curious whether a ...