Caution: Unabashed Bragging Ahead
We have an in-house guideline about bragging on CPRBlog, which is that we try to keep it to a minimum. It’s not so much a matter of modesty as it is that we think the work our Member Scholars and staff do speaks for itself. But we’re going to suspend our usual practice for a moment to note that a recent list of the 20 most-cited administrative and/or environmental law faculty in the United States includes seven CPR Member Scholars.
We’ve always known that our Member Scholars, to deploy a particularly inappropriate metaphor, cut a wide swath across the environmental law landscape. It’s not by accident, of course. We began with a nucleus of progressive scholars at the top of their profession and have been busy recruiting and talent-spotting ever since.
So, proudly and a little shamelessly, here are the seven CPR Member Scholars among the 20 most cited:
- Richard J. Pierce, Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law, The George Washington University;
- Robin Kundis Craig, William H. Leary Professor of Law, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law;
- Douglas A. Kysar, Deputy Dean and Joseph M. Field ’55 Professor of Law, Yale Law …
During the last few years, airlines have increased their reliance on "bait-and-switch" scheduling. They induce travelers to choose their airline based on advertised routes and schedules. They know that especially good routes are valuable and generally charge more for a good route than a bad one. Long after travelers have taken the bait, often paying more than the lowest available price to avoid delay-prone airports, long layovers, and multiple stops, the airlines simply switch around the schedule. While many of these changes can be minor, changing departure and arrival times by 10 or 20 minutes, increasingly airlines feel no compunction at all about completely tearing up the deal they made, adding stops, drastically increasing layover times, and routing the hapless traveler through a different city than she would have selected when she had a choice. They often make these changes just a few weeks in advance, when …
CPR’s Rena Steinzor and Katherine Tracy had an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee over the weekend highlighting the reluctance of police and prosecutors to treat worker deaths as if they were anything but mere accidents. In fact, they’re often the result of illegal cost-cutting and safety shortcuts by employers, behavior that sometimes warrants criminal charges. They write:
When a worker dies because a trench collapses, and it turns out that managers sacrificed safety to get the job done faster, that’s a crime. When managers operate factories with equipment that doesn’t have an accessible emergency shut-off switch and an employee is crushed or loses a limb, those managers should be indicted. But with few exceptions, police and prosecutors treat worker deaths and injuries as unforeseeable “accidents” that can’t be prevented. So too many companies think they can save money by cutting corners and …
Originally published on Environmental Law Prof Blog by CPR Member Scholar Dave Owen
Today, the United States Supreme Court released its opinion in US Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes, Co. The key question in Hawkes was whether a Clean Water Act jurisdictional determination – that is, a determination about whether an area does or does not contain waters subject to federal regulatory jurisdiction – is a final agency action within the meaning of the Administrative Procedure Act. According to a unanimous court, a jurisdictional determination is indeed final agency action.
The majority opinion, written by Justice Roberts, presents the kind of short, businesslike analysis one typically associates with an uncontroversial case. But then comes Justice Kennedy's concurrence, and it's a doozy. In three paragraphs, Justice Kennedy (joined, perhaps not so surprisingly, by Justices Alito and Thomas) asserts that "the reach and systemic consequences of the Clean Water Act …
The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Clean Power Plan – the agency's bold attempt to use the Clean Air Act to protect our health and the environment by regulating greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants – has been challenged in court by some 28 states, 205 members of Congress, electric utilities, coal companies and other industries, some labor unions, and a few conservative, nonprofit law firms. In response, EPA's rule has been defended by the agency itself, 18 states, more than 200 current and former members of Congress, dozens of cities and counties, numerous environmental and public health organizations, certain industries and labor unions, climate scientists, electric grid experts, two former EPA administrators, and others.
The ongoing litigation – now scheduled for a full-court (or en banc) oral argument before the D.C. Circuit in September – seems likely to be ultimately resolved by the U …
This morning, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report finding that hazardous working conditions across the meat and poultry industry put workers at risk of on-the-job injuries and illnesses. While injury and illness rates reportedly declined in the decade from 2004 to 2013, GAO emphasizes that the decrease might not be because of improved working conditions in the industry. Rather, the drop is likely due to data-gathering challenges at the Department of Labor and underreporting across the industry.
GAO last looked at working conditions in the meat and poultry industry in 2005, when it found "that the meat and poultry slaughtering and processing industry was one of the most hazardous in the United States. . . ." GAO's new report reiterates its 2005 findings about common hazards found in the industry, including "hazards associated with musculoskeletal disorders, chemical hazards, biological hazards from pathogens and animals, and …
Are you interested in ensuring that communities impacted by climate change can effectively adapt to changing conditions and that vulnerable populations will be protected and treated fairly in the process? Do you have a background in the legal and policy issues related to both clean water and climate change adaptation? If so, you should consider applying for the new climate change adaptation policy analyst position at the Center for Progressive Reform!
The focus of this position is climate change adaptation, with special emphasis on environmental justice and the implications of climate change for the Chesapeake Bay. The analyst will join a small team of professional staff and a network of top-notch Member Scholars who are examining these issues and are looking to turn policy into action. Among other things, the analyst will:
- Research and promote best practices for adapting to climate change, with special emphasis on protecting …
This post has also been published on The Huffington Post.
Within the next few days, Congress is likely to enact the first update of a major environmental statute in many years. Widely hailed as a bipartisan compromise, legislation to amend the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA, pronounced like the opera Tosca) was made possible by the steely and relentless determination of the U.S. chemical industry. The deal places burdens on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that will undermine public health and environmental protections for many years to come.
A well-funded, politically empowered EPA that employed the best and the brightest of American scientists might be able to make lemonade out of the lemons scattered throughout this unfortunate legislation. But it's far more likely that the agency we have today will soon become mired in "paralysis-by-analysis" before it takes action and a flood of litigation after …
This afternoon, the Fisheries, Water, and Wildlife Subcommittee of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will convene a hearing on a topic that is fast becoming the congressional conservative equivalent of talking about the weather: the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Clean Water Rule.
With the provocative title of "Erosion of Exemptions and Expansion of Federal Control – Implementation of the Definition of Waters of the United States," the hearing is unlikely to provide a sober or thoughtful forum for evaluating the rule's merits. Nevertheless, Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholar Bill Buzbee, who has been tracking this critical safeguard for several years, will do his best to keep the proceedings grounded in reality by offering testimony that rebuts the many "legally and factually erroneous" attacks that are now frequently made against the rule.
Corporate polluters and their allies in Congress have a knack for conjuring controversy …
With the congressional majority continuing to gut enforcement budgets, forcing federal environmental and workplace safety agencies to cut staff, criminal prosecution of corporate bad actors is more important than ever. That's the thrust of Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholar Rena Steinzor's commentary in the May/June issue of The Environmental Forum, the policy journal of the Environmental Law Institute.
As Steinzor notes in the piece:
The BP oil spill and Volkswagen emissions cheating scandals, by their size and audacity, should motivate significant changes in the approach to criminal environmental enforcement, and if those changes make the federal Department of Justice more aggressive, they will come just in time, because EPA and the states’ routine civil enforcement is arguably in worse shape than at any time since the agency was created 46 years ago. EPA has endured a decade of deep budget cuts …
