Environmental protesters charged with trespassing and turning off valves at a Minnesota pipeline, as part of a coordinated “Shut It Down” direct action campaign, have proffered a “necessity defense.” But the necessity defense is a narrow one that has seldom prevailed in past civil disobedience prosecutions, and it shouldn’t prevail here. [Stephen Bainbridge]
Posts Tagged ‘climate change’
Environment roundup
- Seattle will ban restaurants from giving plastic straws [Christian Britschgi]
- Big money in climate inquisition? Lawyers with contingency-fee role in AGs’ carbon campaign join Hagens Berman [Scott Flaherty, American Lawyer; earlier on climate lawyers on contingency fee here and here]
- Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, 2008, includes entries on urban planning by Mark Pennington and on eminent domain and takings by Karol Boudreaux;
- California legislature’s $1.5 billion green Christmas tree includes bill “aimed at helping a union looking to organize workers who assemble Tesla electric cars in Fremont” [AP]
- Michigan AG Schuette indicts state human services chief Nick Lyon in Flint water case, and a prominent Democrat and Republican both take exception to that [Kathleen Gray, Detroit Free Press (former AG Frank Kelley); Maura Corrigan]
- “You Should Be Able to Vindicate Federal Property Rights in Federal Court” [Ilya Shapiro and Meggan DeWitt, Cato on Wayside Church v. Van Buren County]
San Francisco, Oakland sue oil companies over climate change
Can’t get what you seek in the political process? Sue! (And maybe cut in your lawyer pals for mega-fees too). [Kurtis Alexander, San Francisco Chronicle]
Lawyers work on hurricane-suit theories
While suits seeking to blame climate events on carbon sources and emitters have gone nowhere in the past, some lawyers claim “scientific advances are making it possible to precisely measure what portion of a disaster such as Harvey can be attributed to the planet’s changing climate.” Another set of targets: “government agencies, companies managing infrastructure or architects and engineers who have been involved in building damaged infrastructure, from sewage-treatment plants to levees,” and municipal planners. [Sebastien Malo, Reuters]
Environment roundup
- Clean Water Act’s citizen-suit procedure can “be a huge money maker” for private groups: “Policing for profit in private environmental enforcement” [Jonathan Wood]
- “Chicago Alderman Tells Property Owners to ‘Come Back to Me on Your Knees’ or Face Zoning Changes” [Eric Boehm, Reason]
- Wetlands: “Farmer faces $2.8 million fine after plowing field” [Damon Arthur, Redding Record-Searchlight]
- Urban bike lanes are green religious monuments, writes Arnold Kling, a biker himself;
- Climate change shareholder disclosure: “Class action lawyers have become very clever at developing these cases for profit.” [Nina Chestney, Reuters]
- “Why full compensation for property owners might lead to more unlawful takings” [Ilya Somin]
Environment roundup
- Here come big, beautiful eminent domain cases over condemnation of land for the US-Mexico wall [Gideon Kanner, Ilya Somin]
- Judge greenlights “public trust” climate change suit, an exercise in court- and lawyer-empowerment [Samuel Boxerman, WLF]
- Next Friday, Mar. 17, Cato will host panel on pending SCOTUS case of Murr v. Wisconsin (property rights, regulatory takings) with Roger Pilon (Cato), J. Peter Byrne (Georgetown Law), and Ilya Somin (George Mason Law), with opening remarks by Todd Gaziano (Pacific Legal) and moderated by Ilya Shapiro (Cato) [register or watch online]
- Swallowing dubious health claims, Maryland advisory panel urges schools to turn off wi-fi. Plenty wrong with that [ACSH]
- By 31-69 margin, Los Angeles voters crush anti-development Measure S, “NIMBYism on steroids” [City Observatory, earlier]
- Tackling WOTUS is just the start: “The Clean Water Act Needs A Reset” [Reed Hopper, Investors, Jonathan Wood, related]
Environment roundup
- Major new Proposition 65 regs spell plenty of new compliance and litigation issues for those doing business in California [Cal Biz Lit, first post in series]
- For-the-kids federal climate lawsuit on “public trust” theory represents, among other things, giving up on democratic persuasion [Ian Adams, R Street, to which might be added that lawsuits pretending to represent the future interests of children in general act as power transfers to lawyers and the judiciary] A different view: David Bailey and David Bookbinder, Niskanen Center;
- “Why Don’t We Allow Markets to Dictate Parking Policy?” [Ike Brannon, Cato]
- “Once, protesters threatened to burn Bryson and his family in their home.” [Billings Gazette on Standing Rock standoff; Radley Balko on a prosecutor who might be blurring sympathetic coverage of protests with legal responsibility for them; Shawn McCoy/Inside Sources pushes back against popular narratives on Dakota Access Pipeline]
- Think our law-based eminent domain system has problems? In Brazil, where poor favelas often lack formal land titling, compulsory public acquisition of land can play out as a matter of discretion [Gregory Dolin and Irina Manta, SSRN]
- Obama administration plans for drastically more severe fuel efficiency standards are prime target for early rollback [Ronald Bailey]
Environment roundup
- Feinstein-Collins bill (“Personal Care Products Safety Act”) to regulate soap, lotions, and cosmetics is best left to swirl down drain [Eric Boehm/Reason, earlier, Handcrafted Soap and Cosmetics Guild and ICMAD (mid-sized and smaller companies), Modern Soapmaking, my appearance on KPCC “AirTalk”]
- Standing in the need of standing: federal judge denies motion to dismiss suit over global warming against federal government and business groups on behalf of 21 young persons and scientist James Hansen [Phuong Le, AP/ABC News]
- Seattle home buyers, it’s okay to choke a little at what your money could have bought in low-regulation Houston instead [Randal O’Toole, more] Land use regs impede economic mobility: you could have read it at Cato first [David Boaz]
- “Why Industrial Farms Are Good for the Environment” [Jayson Lusk]
- “Suit claiming air emissions that fall to the ground constitute hazardous waste under Superfund proves too ambitious even for the Ninth Circuit” [WLF’s summary of Kevin Haroff and Zachary Kearns, Marten Law]
- “State social justice groups did not feel consulted” in carbon tax proposal on Washington ballot, which failed [Coyote, AP/KIRO]
Banking and finance roundup
- Wells Fargo declines to serve firm that sells knives online, which might relate to a “mass de-risking” trend that followed Operation Choke Point [Kelsey Harkness/Daily Signal, H. Clay Aalders/The Truth About Knives]
- “Time For Securities Lawyers To Stand Behind Their `Confidential Witnesses'” [Lyle Roberts via Daniel Fisher]
- Attractions of English law may help London retain luster as financial center post-Brexit [Jon Sindreu, WSJ]
- “Hillary Clinton’s ‘Exit Tax’ Is an Unseemly Example of Banana Republic Economics” [Daniel Mitchell, related earlier] Three good ideas from Clinton’s small business tax plan [Scott Greenberg, Tax Foundation]
- Lawyers file class actions against Yale, Harvard, MIT, many other universities, objecting to excessive fees on retirement fund investments [Ira Stoll, Future of Capitalism; Benjamin Edwards, PrawfsBlawg]
- “White House climate disclosure plan is major executive overreach.” [Ray Lehmann, R Street Institute]
Environment roundup
- Richard Pipes: “Private Property Sets the Boundary of the State” [Istituto Bruno Leoni video via Arnold Kling and Alberto Mingardi; my 1999 review of Pipes on property]
- “‘Housing is a human right,’ says [L.A.] group founded for the sole purpose of preventing new housing from being built” [@MarketUrbanism]
- “EPA Putting Red Light on Amateur Car Racing” [Kenric Ward, Reason]
- Publicity stunts in our time: “Gov. Rick Snyder target of RICO lawsuit over Flint water crisis” [Flint Journal]
- Speaking of which: lawsuit “on behalf of the future” in Oregon federal court seeks to represent youth against the federal government and major energy companies [Eugene Register-Guard]
- Some things to expect as autonomous vehicles take over, including the freeing up of a lot of expensive stuff and space urban areas [Johnny Sanfilippo, Market Urbanism]