Harvard Environmental Law Review

Student Note

Castles Made of Sand: Public-Interest Litigation and China’s New Environmental Protection Law

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By Daniel Carpenter-Gold It has long been a truism that China’s environmental legislation is plentiful and powerful, but only unevenly enforced. Given China’s reputation as an authoritarian state with immense capacity to regulate its citizens, this is counter-intuitive. To understand the latest environmental legislation in China, we must make sense of this seeming paradox. The … [Read more...] about Castles Made of Sand: Public-Interest Litigation and China’s New Environmental Protection Law

Mapping Fracking: An Analysis of Law, Power, and Regional Distribution in the United States

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By Benjamin E. Apple This Note posits a framework with which to analyze U.S. fracking development at local and regional scales. It aims to illuminate the ways in which three legal regimes — private rights, public government regulation, and local government law — influence the interactive dynamics between local and regional actors, which in turn determine the distribution of … [Read more...] about Mapping Fracking: An Analysis of Law, Power, and Regional Distribution in the United States

Federalism in the Air: Is the Clean Air Act’s “My Way or No Highway” Provision Constitutional After NFIB v. Sebelius?

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By David Baake Since the New Deal era, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Spending Clause to permit Congress to use conditional grants to encourage state governments to take action that Congress could not require them to take. In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court unexpectedly restricted this power, holding for the first time ever … [Read more...] about Federalism in the Air: Is the Clean Air Act’s “My Way or No Highway” Provision Constitutional After NFIB v. Sebelius?

Debt, Nature, and Indigenous Rights: Twenty-five Years of Debt-for-Nature Evolution

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By Jared E. Knicley Debt-for-nature swaps are an innovative and potentially powerful mechanism for addressing the significant issues of indebtedness and environmental degradation in the developing world. Over the past twenty-five years, debt-for-nature swaps have evolved across many dimensions to their present-day typology of bilateral fund-generators that capitalize projects … [Read more...] about Debt, Nature, and Indigenous Rights: Twenty-five Years of Debt-for-Nature Evolution