Environmental Law & Policy

CALI currently offers many interactive exercises for Environmental Law. You will need to set up a password to use CALI online. To set up a username and password, you will be asked to enter UC Law’s authorization code. You can get this code from any reference librarian or at the Circulation Desk.

Climate law runs the gamut from state and local regulations to federal policies and international agreements and includes both public and private sector involvement. The focus of this text is on core concepts of climate change law rather than all of the complex details. The book begins by discussing the scientific and policy issues that frame the legal scheme, including the state of climate science, the meaning of the social cost of carbon, and the variety of tools that are available to reduce carbon emissions. It then covers in turn the international, national, and state efforts in this sphere. Finally, the book turns to the challenge of adapting to climate change, before exploring the concept of geoengineering and the potential challenges associated with using geoengineering as a tool for addressing climate change. The new edition covers major developments such as the Supreme Court's decision in West Virginia v. EPA, Trump Administration rollbacks and their subsequent fates, climate litigation brought by state and local governments, and the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

Law students & faculty only. Policies regarding sustainable development and climate change management appeared on the world stage at the same time and should be studied and understood as a single body of law. This Nutshell enables readers to learn how the U.S. legal system fosters greenhouse gas reduction, energy conservation, and sustainable patterns of growth including energy efficient and sustainable buildings, the use of renewable energy resources, the protection of sequestering open space, and the adaptation of buildings and communities to sea level rise and natural disasters.

The book provides a broad yet detailed understanding of the major components of energy systems, energy infrastructure, and energy markets and the laws that guide their development. It covers all major energy policy sectors including oil and gas extraction, electricity regulation, renewable energy development, and regulation of vehicles and transportation fuels. The book is timely—describing rapidly changing policy in environmental regulation such as hydraulic fracturing, planning for electric transmission lines, state carbon reduction and clean energy mandates, and natural gas and oil exports. It also places these recent developments in the context of the many long-lasting policies that created current energy infrastructure and markets.

Environmental Law and Policy is a user-friendly, concise, treatment of environmental law. The book provides a broad conceptual overview of environmental law while also explaining the major statutes and cases. The book includes multiple problem exercises, describing a legal or policy conflict in detail and asking students to identify and assess solutions. The new edition is fully updated to include policy initiatives of the Biden Administration, important recent Supreme Court decisions through the 2023-2024 term (Sackett, Loper Bright Enterprises, Jarkesy, Cedar Point Nursery), and the emerging role of Native American tribes in environmental law. The first part of the book provides an engaging discussion of the major themes and issues that cross-cut environmental law, including a new problem exercise on the Rights of Nature. The second part of the book examines the substance of environmental law, with separate sections on each of the major statutes. The third part of the book discusses important issues of natural resources law, including the public trust doctrine, endangered species conservation, wetlands protection, and energy issues. Part four addresses environmental impact statements and the National Environmental Policy Act.

This text contains detailed chapters and coverage of not only Environmental Law, but also Energy Law, Climate Change Law, and Land-Use Law. Includes new Supreme Court decisions and developments on requirements for standing to bring environmental litigation; more limited Supreme Court Chevron deference to the E.P.A.;new Supreme Court decisions in Hughes v. Talen, Michigan v. E.P.A, and Murr v. Wisconsin; new treatment of lack of any private-party rights of action in environmental law; new material on environmental repercussions of “fracking” and the law; new material on protecting public drinking water supplies in both riparian and prior appropriation state law systems; the most recent cases interpreting the extent of “waters of the United States;” legal treatment of the Clean Power Plan, now enjoined by the Supreme Court; a complete update of new legal environmental issues regulating the nuclear power fleet in the United States; detailed treatment of pending nuisance suits by cities against oil companies for climate change damages related to rises in sea level; and coverage of the Paris Agreement of 2015 and climate change.

Farber’s Environmental Law in a Nutshell provides an up-to-date foundation for understanding environmental law. Expert text includes coverage of the full range of environmental issues, from climate change and air pollution, to waste disposal and wetlands. Surveys the many statutory and common-law regulations shaping the world in which we live.

The stories in this book feature characters as diverse as community activists, small farmers, big businesses, dedicated scientists, skilled lawyers, strong-willed judges, and Presidents of the United States. Four of the ten selected cases established the field of environmental law, three others refined it, and the final three have sought to limit its effectiveness and reach. This selection mirrors the development of the field of environmental law, from the first, heady days of its creation to its current conflicts with other laws and values, including some embedded in the Constitution.

Percival's High Court Case Summaries on Environmental Law, contains briefs for each major case in this casebook. High Court briefs are written to present the facts, issue, decision and rationale for each case in a concise manner. This book also supplies case vocabulary, which defines new or unusual legal words found throughout the cases. Finally, to enhance the reader's recall, there is a corresponding memory graphic for each brief that portrays an entertaining visual representation of the relevant facts or law of the case.

Law students & faculty only. This nutshell covers the full gamut of international environmental issues, laws and policies challenging the world today. The sixth edition responds to important developments arising subsequent to the fifth edition, relating, inter alia, to sustainable development, climate change, and energy. These developments include the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of 2015, the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change that replaced the Kyoto Protocol, and the challenges posed by renewable energy and global poverty. In sum, the book offers a synoptic overview, and instructive analysis of the relevant treaties, customary law, and soft law instruments governing all areas of international environmental law.

Natural Resources Law and Policy is a concise text on how we manage our valuable resources. The authors provide a broad conceptual overview of natural resource management while also explaining the major statutes, cases, and doctrines. The first part of the book explains the major themes and issues that cross-cut natural resources law as well as the relevant legal doctrines from administrative law, constitutional law, and standing. The second part of the book explores the management of specific natural resources - from fisheries, forests and frogs to national parks, oil and water, and others. A series of problem exercises run throughout the book, describing a legal or policy conflict in detail and asking students to identify and assess solutions. Textual boxes out set out the details of important judicial opinions.

This book familiarizes readers with the basic mechanics of the major environmental statutes, including, among others, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Endangered Species Act. It also includes a separate chapter on how these environmental statutes are enforced by the Government and through citizen suits.

This Concise Hornbook is a comprehensive yet concise user-friendly treatise on important natural resources law issues. It surveys cases, statutes, regulations, legal developments, and policies that have shaped, and will continue to influence, natural resources law throughout the 20th century and the early 21st century. Topics include resource economics, jurisdictional constraints, the National Environment Policy Act (NEPA), wildlife, public lands, preservation, recreation, rangeland, timber, mining, and energy. The 2nd edition provides expanded treatment of climate-related issues and a new chapter on renewable energy law, and it updates the changes in natural resources policy instigated by the Trump Administration since 2017.

In the last decade, private environmental governance has exploded in response to public demands for corporate action that helps the planet and over frustration with government gridlock. Private environmental governance is now an accepted and powerful environmental policy tool, from corporate sustainability and ESG goals to seafood and forest certification systems, from net zero emissions to land trusts. This book provides the first user-friendly and comprehensive guide to these innovative new approaches that go farther than government regulation. If you want to understand the future of environmental policy in the 21st century, you need to understand the actors, strategies, and challenges central to private environmental governance.

This Understanding treatise provides a comprehensive overview of environmental and land use law in the United States. Most of the content addresses the most seminal and widely litigated federal environmental statutes, which have served as the template for the majority of state environmental laws. However, the discussion includes salient state laws when they help to inform particular topics. Early chapters provide a basic summary of the building blocks of environmental law: its constitutional underpinning; federal versus state regulatory authority; common law antecedents; and how the process for the environmental review of government (typically agency) actions operates. Later chapters have been revised to address updated developments involving air pollution and controls, the Clean Water Act, Hazardous Waste regulations and cleanups, and various statutes governing classes of chemicals that collectively can be termed toxic substances. The discussion of noise regulation has been revised to address an increasingly pernicious but often underappreciated kind of emissions that historically had been relegated to state and local land use controls. Climate change is increasingly at the forefront of policy discussions, as are evolving ideas about the responsibility of corporations for including environmental goals in their business models and performance. Hence, these topics, domestically as well as internationally, have been expanded where relevant in this fourth edition. Finally, the new Chapter 14, largely replacing that of earlier editions, directs the readers' attention to emerging areas of environmental concern that increasingly demand regulatory attention.

Water Law: Concepts & Insights provides both a general overview of basic water law doctrines and an exploration of how water law--the law and policies governing allocation of water--fit into broader ecological and environmental law issues. The book provides an overview of important hydrological principles before discussing the major state-law systems governing use of water in the United States--riparian law, prior appropriation, and specific groundwater doctrines. It then explores the federal government's interests in the fresh waters of the United States, ranging from protection of navigability to water infrastructure projects to reserved federal water rights. Putting the law governing water use into a broader context, Water Law: Concepts & Insights then explores the intersections of state water law with energy policy and production, water quality protections, endangered species protections, and broader watershed management. It ends by returning to the concept of water rights as protected private property rights and the complexities of constitutional "takings" litigation when environmental protections interfere with those rights.

This Outline summarizes the basic black letter rules of Environmental Law in a way that allows students to appreciate how different parts of their course material fit together. The Outline covers approaches to environmental regulations, constitutional issues in Environmental Law, the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act and other toxic substances statutes. The Outline also discusses the complex intersection of law, sciences such as biology, geology, and engineering, and important economic, ethical, and social issues. It also includes a glossary of environmental terms and practice exam questions.

This outline covers common law theories and environmental litigation, the judicial role in environmental litigation, the administrative process, constitutional limits on environmental regulation, the National Environmental Policy Act, The Clean Air Act, The Federal Water Pollution Control Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, control of toxic substances, land use, and international environmental law. The text offers quizzes and essay exam questions and answers.

This study guide uses multiple-choice and short-answer questions to test your students’ knowledge of environmental law doctrine. Each multiple-choice question is accompanied by a detailed answer that indicates which of four options is the best answer and explains why that option is better than the other three options. Each short-answer question (designed to be answered in no more than fifteen minutes) is followed by a thoughtful, yet brief, model answer.