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Navigating State Law in Local Climate Action
No full textLocal governments are well-positioned to lead the fight against climate change by reducing community-wide greenhouse gas emissions, promoting renewable energy resources, and otherwise advancing climate mitigation and adaptation goals. Many local governments have already taken actions, and there is more they can do. In mitigating and adapting to the climate crisis, local governments must be aware of and act consistently with preemptive state laws that limit their authority. This report provides state-by-state information, resources, and analysis for nineteen states on key state-local preemption issues.
The states covered in this report represent several of the “swing” states that are the most closely politically divided, ones where control of the state is split between political parties, and others — like Texas and Florida — where legislatures have taken particularly noteworthy steps to preempt local climate law. For each state covered, the chapters highlight the sources of local authority to regulate and the limits imposed by the state, including: (1) constitutional and statutory delegations of home rule authority and police powers to local governments; (2) state law governing the nature and content of home rule charters, as well as preemption of local law generally; (3) a catalog of current state laws that may preempt local climate action; (4) leading case law on home rule and preemption of local law; (5) where applicable, information on recent and ongoing litigation; (6) a summary of how the state handles building codes; (7) discussion of legal considerations related to public utilities; (8) helpful secondary sources; and (9) additional relevant information
New York Environmental Legislation in 2024
Full text linkIn 2024, New York State enacted several laws aimed either at dealing with the adverse impacts of climate change such as extreme heat and increasingl severe and frequent storms or at helping to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions to avoid or minimize the adverse impacts. The final bill signed by Governor Kathy Hochul in 2024 was the most high-profile of these laws — the Climate Change Superfund Act, which will require fossil fuel companies to pay for adaptation measures.
Other new laws last year related to extreme heat in schools and prisons, food waste, expanded polystyrene containers, community gardens, and native plant seeds. These and other new and amended environmental and energy laws — as well as notable vetoes — are discussed in this article
The Role of Marine CO2 Removal in Combating Climate Change
Full text linkCombating climate change requires not only rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, but also removal of significant amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. CO2 removal (CDR) comes in many different forms, but climate scientists and policymakers are focusing on the potentially important role of large-scale use of emerging ocean-based techniques, often referred to as marine CDR (mCDR). In the United States, mCDR in domestic waters is governed by a patchwork of laws and regulations. There are also major uncertainties concerning regulation of mCDR in the open ocean, where international treaty regimes have struggled to develop coherent rules. On September 30, 2024, the Environmental Law Institute hosted a panel of experts that explored the issues, challenges, and opportunities for large-scale mCDR deployment. Below, we present a transcript of that discussion, which has been edited for style, clarity, and space considerations
Intellectual Property Statutes: 2025
No full textIntellectual Property Statutes: 2025 offers a compendium of the principal U.S. intellectual property statutes and international treaties. It integrates convenient tools (table of contents, headers, tabs) for navigating the materials. It is designed to be used in conjunction with intellectual property casebooks. It is also a useful resource for IP practitioners.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1371/thumbnail.jp
Price Discrimination Discrimination
Full text linkCredit price personalization, where lenders set prices based on individual borrower and loan characteristics, is a common practice across many loan types, with conventional accounts of its harms focusing on the ways in which risk-based pricing, or setting prices based on borrowers’ credit risk, can lead to disparities for protected groups like racial minorities and women. This Article examines an often-overlooked yet potentially harmful form of price personalization — charging borrowers different rates based on their willingness-to-pay, known as price discrimination — and argues that this practice can exploit vulnerable borrowers, including protected groups like racial minorities and women, by imposing higher costs unrelated to their credit risk, resulting in what I term “price discrimination” discrimination. Beyond entrenching financial disparities, price discrimination can exacerbate default risks, especially as the use of big data and artificial intelligence can make price discrimination more pervasive.
Despite the potential risks of price discrimination for protected groups, the existing discrimination legal framework treats price discrimination categorically, as either entirely permissible or entirely impermissible, without providing clear or consistent criteria for when such practices are justified. In contrast, I propose a harm-based approach to addressing “price discrimination” discrimination, which evaluates the permissibility of pricing policies based on the extent of harm they cause. This approach considers two key factors: the magnitude of the disparities and the legitimacy of the pricing strategy. Focusing on these dimensions offers a more direct approach to addressing price discrimination concerns and aligns with the statutory framework prohibiting unfair, deceptive, and abusive acts or practices
Trump Attacks on Climate Science May Violate Numerous Federal Laws
Full text linkStarting on its first day on January 20, 2025, the second Trump administration has launched an unprecedented rollback of efforts to fight climate change. The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law’s Climate Backtracker already has 117 items.
Much of this is aimed at scientific research on climate change, or has the effect of inhibiting the conduct and dissemination of this research. Many of these actions may also violate federal laws.
This article discusses these actions, some of their legal implications, and the litigation challenges that have already been brought. It begins with actions that are specifically aimed at climate research, and then moves to actions that affect a broad swath of scientific research including that related to climate
The Administrative State\u27s Second Face
Full text linkWe often assume that there is one administrative state, with one body of administrative law that governs it. In fact, the administrative state has two distinct faces: one turned toward regulation and benefits distribution, and one turned toward physical force and surveillance. The two faces are growing further apart under the Roberts Court, which has hemmed in the first face with decisions like Loper Bright while showing solicitude for national security and law enforcement agencies.
This Article delineates the two faces of the administrative state. It provides a descriptive account of the second face and the distinctive administrative law that governs it. While first-face administrative law demands delegated authority, transparent justification, and democratic collaboration, second-face administrative law allows agencies to operate without specific grants of power, to process knowledge in secret, and to control populations. Second-face administrative law inverts the ordinary norms of first-face administrative law. And where the first face drives legal and political conflict, the second face enjoys relative consensus.
Bringing the second face into view qualifies talk of an ongoing “attack” on the administrative state. It calls attention to neglected issues of enforcement, allows us to analyze how administrative law supports an interrelated set of violent state structures, and reveals that consensus support for second-face agencies is misguided. Those who seek to combat government overreach and to protect liberty and popular self-governance should turn their attention to the administrative state’s second face
Varied Legal Parameters Shape Fiduciaries’ Ability to Act on Climate Risk
Full text linkCommentators who advocate either for or against corporate and asset managers addressing climate risks often refer to “fiduciary duty” as justification for their claims. Yet no field of corporate or asset management actually imposes one standalone fiduciary duty. Nor do any two business-law fields impose the same fiduciary regime. Instead, these fields adopt differing arrays of fiduciary duties to address various types of relationships, comprising a different blend of affirmative obligations and/or prohibitions, assessed with different degrees of strictness by enforcers and courts. As a result, overgeneralizations about fiduciaries’ duty in all business-law contexts tend to further obscure what a real-world fiduciary must, can, or cannot do in the face of today’s systemic climate risks.
This paper explores precisely where fiduciary law may require, permit, or prohibit corporate and investment decision-makers’ actions to address climate risk. The paper compares fiduciary regimes in five distinct legal contexts relevant to long-term U.S. economic development: corporate operations, contracted partnerships, employment-based retirement savings, a broader range of investment portfolios, and private trusts. It outlines these fiduciary roles by first tracing where a given fiduciary’s obligations originate, what that fiduciary controls, and on whose behalf the fiduciary exerts this control. It then fleshes out fiduciary roles along several axes, including which particular duties the fiduciary faces, what standard of review is applied, and how much autonomy exists to contract away from default parameters of the fiduciary relationship.
Overall, comparing these varied fiduciary regimes suggests that advocates of addressing systemic climate risk not only can counter restrictive formulations of “the fiduciary duty,” but also can leverage diversities within these siloed fields. Relatively permissive regimes (such as those operating under states’ corporate law and the federal Advisers Act, or through bespoke private-trust arrangements) provide fiduciaries with ample grounds for deploying emissions-mitigating efforts in the pursuit of beneficiaries’ best interests. Relatively restrictive regimes, particularly those with diversification and/or impartiality obligations (such as those operating under ERISA and default private-trust law), can ultimately require all of their fiduciaries to consider systemic risks
Thailand v. Katanyu Muenkhamruang “Pan”
Full text linkThe criminal proceedings against Ms. Katanyu Muenkhamruang (“Pan”), a 27-year-old Thai student and pro-democracy activist, violated international fair trial standards and Thailand’s human rights obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Pan was convicted under Thailand’s sedition law and the Computer-Related Crimes Act for Facebook posts promoting peaceful anti-government protests in 2021. The trial revealed numerous due process violations, including violation of the presumption of innocence, reliance on unsubstantiated claims, and a lack of reasoned judgment. Despite the absence of direct evidence linking Pan to the alleged posts, the court inferred guilt, and arbitrarily disregarded exculpatory evidence. Pan’s conviction also infringed on her rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, as her alleged actions fell squarely within speech protected under international human rights law. The politically motivated two-year prison sentence sets a dangerous precedent for suppressing democratic expression in Thailand and highlights the urgent need to reform the country’s sedition and cybercrime laws. Overturning this conviction on appeal would reaffirm fundamental rights and restore justice
The Authoritarian Argument
No full textStudies on recent populist regimes and conventional authoritarian ones now appreciate the role of law. But existing accounts view the use of law in instrumental terms. Such a role for law surely exists, but it does not fully describe authoritarian legality. After all, such legality not only exercises force but also claims authority. It offers reasons in its defense. A key feature of many an authoritarian transition are discursive practices that justify the turn from democracy. This essay considers cases of populism and military takeovers to understand how authoritarianism is an argument. The authoritarian rationale is centered on law’s representational role in society. We are a society by belonging to the same legal order. Scholars of democracy and authoritarianism must reckon with this claim, as we must with the idea that authoritarian law does not operate merely within the domain of power but also within the space of reasons