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Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States
Get PDFLegal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States provides a “legal playbook” for deep decarbonization in the United States, identifying well over 1,000 legal options for enabling the United States to address one of the greatest problems facing this country and the rest of humanity.
The book is based on two reports by the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP) that explain technical and policy pathways for reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. This 80x50 target and similarly aggressive carbon abatement goals are often referred to as deep decarbonization, distinguished because it requires systemic changes to the energy economy.
Legal Pathways explains the DDPP reports and then addresses in detail 35 different topics in as many chapters. These 35 chapters cover energy efficiency, conservation, and fuel switching; electricity decarbonization; fuel decarbonization; carbon capture and negative emissions; non-carbon dioxide climate pollutants; and a variety of cross-cutting issues. The legal options involve federal, state, and local law, as well as private governance. Authors were asked to include all options, even if they do not now seem politically realistic or likely, giving Legal Pathways not just immediate value, but also value over time.
While both the scale and complexity of deep decarbonization are enormous, this book has a simple message: deep decarbonization is achievable in the United States using laws that exist or could be enacted. These legal tools can be used with significant economic, social, environmental, and national security benefits.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1000/thumbnail.jp
Guarantor of Last Resort
Get PDFThe optimal response to a financial crisis entails addressing two, often conflicting, demands: stopping the panic and starting the clock. When short-term depositors flee, banks can be forced to sell assets at fire-sale prices, causing credit to contract and real economic activity to decline. To reduce these adverse spillover effects, policymakers routinely intervene to stop systemic runs. All too often, however, policymakers deploy stopgap measures that allow the underlying problems to fester. To promote long-term economic health, they must also ferret out the underlying problems and allocate the losses that cannot be avoided. A well-designed guarantor of last resort can help address these conflicting demands. Just-in-time guarantees keep private capital in the system, providing policymakers the time that they need to develop a viable plan to address deficiencies. A strict time limit on those guarantees ensures that policymakers and market participants remain motivated to devise such a plan, avoiding the alternative pitfall of excessive forbearance
Eroding Checks on Presidential Authority – Norms, the Civil Service, and the Courts
Get PDFSusan Rose-Ackerman\u27s Executive Rulemaking and Democratic Legitimacy: \u27Reform\u27 in the United States and the United Kingdom\u27s Route to Brexit insightfully illuminates important differences between parliamentary and presidential systems of government in relation to executive bodies\u27 production of the large volume of secondary legislation common, indeed inevitable, for both. Agreeing heartily with her conclusion that the weakness of parliamentary engagement with secondary legislation, and limited judicial review of its production, counsels greater provision for public participation and transparency of action at the agency level, there is little for me to add. Aware, too, as she remarks, that others have dealt more extensively with pending legislative proposals to amend American rulemaking processes and with questionable tactics of the Trump administration in relation to existing regulations of which it disapproves, the comments on American issues that follow have more the nature of supplement than critique. Her account of the tensions and hopes for future developments on both sides of the Atlantic are entirely persuasive
Defining Federal Crimes
No full textDefining Federal Crimes, Second Edition frames federal criminal law as a distinctive world created and shaped by the interplay between the three branches of the federal government. It provides an overview of basic doctrine while inviting students to explore the many difficult and unsettled questions that continue to perplex judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and policymakers. Particularly since students’ basic Criminal Law courses draw on penal laws from any number of jurisdictions, this book will be their first exposure to an actual criminal law system, in which each law-shaping institution can react to the moves of the others.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1040/thumbnail.jp
Freedom, Choice, and Contracts
Get PDFIn “The Choice Theory of Contracts,” we explain contractual freedom and celebrate the plurality of contract types. Here, we reply to critics by refining choice theory and showing how it fits and shapes what we term the “Contract Canon”.
I. Freedom. (1) Charles Fried challenges our account of Kantian autonomy, but his views, we show, largely converge with choice theory. (2) Nathan Oman argues for a commerce-enhancing account of autonomy. We counter that he arbitrarily slights noncommercial spheres central to human interaction. (3) Yitzhak Benbaji suggests that choice theory’s commitment to autonomy is overly perfectionist. Happily, in response to Benbaji, we can cite with approval Charles Fried’s point that contract types are “enabling our liberties.”
II. Choice. (4) Aditi Bagchi criticizes our inattention to impediments to choice. We show how choice theory’s commitments to both multiplicity and relational justice ameliorate these impediments. (5) Gregory Klass explores parol evidence to highlight the mechanisms of choice. We substantially concur with his position, and show how such mechanisms can ensure voluntariness, an essential element of choice. (6) Oren Bar-Gill and Clayton Gillette question the institutional capacity of existing legal actors to implement choice theory. Working from the example of cohabitation, we offer a somewhat more optimistic view.
III. Contracts. (7) Peter Benson contends our focus on the rational slights the reasonable. Although we did not use this Rawlsian vocabulary, choice theory complies with its strictures – more so than transfer theory. (8) Daniel Markovits and Alan Schwartz claim provocatively that contract theory must: capitulate before pluralism (as they endorse); leverage it; or fall victim to a so-called “embracing” approach (their charge against us). We reject the charge that choice theory is foundationally value-pluralist. Instead, we cabin pluralism and put it to work. (9) The Contract Canon starts on the next big step for choice theory by explaining existing doctrine (rebutting Benson on lack of fit) and helping adjudicate contract practice (countering Markovits and Schwartz on the vices of our pluralism).
Each Article in this Issue advances the field; each prompts us to refine choice theory – all steps, we hope, toward a more just and justified law of contract
Law\u27s Halo and the Moral Machine
Get PDFHow will we assess the morality of decisions made by artificial intelligence – and will our judgments be swayed by what the law says? Focusing on a moral dilemma in which a driverless car chooses to sacrifice its passenger to save more people, this study offers evidence that our moral intuitions can be influenced by the presence of the law
The Present Crisis in American Bail
Get PDFMore than fifty years after a predicted coming federal courts crisis in bail, district courts have begun granting major systemic injunctions against money bail systems. This Essay surveys the constitutional theories and circuit splits that are forming through these litigations. The major point of controversy is the level of federal court scrutiny triggered by allegedly unconstitutional bail regimes, an inquiry complicated by ambiguous Supreme Court precedents on (1) post-conviction fines, (2) preventive detention at the federal level, and (3) the adequacy of probable cause hearings. The Essay argues that the application of strict scrutiny makes the best sense of these precedents while also taking account of the troubled history of American bail, particularly during the Reconstruction Era from which the right to sue state officials in federal court for violations of constitutional rights emerged
Oversight and Enforcement of Public Integrity – A City-by-City Study: Nashville
Get PDFNashville’s identity, at least to an outsider’s eye, is inextricably linked to its musical heritage. But quite apart from its lyrical inclinations, Music City USA also has history of corruption scandals, countered by grassroots efforts of its citizenry to push for a more open and transparent government. The recent corruption charges against ex-Mayor Megan Barry and the “Do Better” law passed at the end of 2018 perfectly exemplify these dueling motifs of corruption and public integrity activism.
Nashville was founded in 1779 under the name of Fort Nashborough. In 1806, Nashville was granted a charter by the Tennessee legislature and held its first mayor elections, with Joseph Coleman becoming the first mayor of the city. In 1843 Nashville became the permanent capital of Tennessee. From the middle of the 19th century and through War World II, Nashville expanded quickly into a commercial and industrial hub, taking advantage of its position on the Cumberland River. Its population grew rapidly, from a little under 7,000 inhabitants in 1840 to over 150,000 by the start of World War II. After World War II, Nashville struggled with an all too common problem facing U.S. cities at the time: an exodus of residents to the surrounding suburbs. As the population of the surrounding Davidson County swelled, Nashville’s population shrank and its tax revenue dwindled. Faced with a shrinking tax base and unpopular attempts to raise tax revenue, Nashville officials worked with Davidson County officials to unite the two municipalities under one single charter. After a failed attempt in 1958, Nashville and Davidson County residents finally approved the charter on June 28, 1962 and the Metropolitan government was formed
Report of the Task Force for the Promotion of Public Trust: City of Atlanta
Get PDFThe Task Force for the Promotion of Public Trust was formed out of a desire by the Mayor and Atlanta City Council to strengthen the City’s ethical environment and analyze the City’s existing resources pertaining to oversight and investigations currently divided among a number of City agencies. The Task Force was also asked to assess the role of the City’s Independent Compliance Office, a new investigative office created by Ordinance earlier this year. The mandate of the Task Force was to juxtapose an analysis of the operational roles of the multiple offices in Atlanta responsible for investigations, ethics, oversight, audit, contracting and transparency; study best practices from other cities; and hold public hearings. Having conducted that extensive research over the course of the past five months, the Task Force has concluded its work. In this Report we finalize our mission by making recommendations that Atlanta set the right tone from the top, in conjunction with the establishment of a more centralized and effective enforcement agency that can hold all City officials and those doing business with the City, accountable
Proposal for a New State Ethics Commission in New York
Get PDFWith the start of the 2019 legislative session, some New York lawmakers are setting their sights on overhauling the state’s current anti-corruption and ethics structure. Since 2000, 30 New York lawmakers have left state office facing criminal or ethical allegations and many more public employees have faced allegations of criminal or unethical conduct and termination of their employment. Leading the effort to overhaul the current system is Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat from Manhattan, who recently announced her plan to introduce a constitutional amendment that would create a new independent ethics commission to investigate wrongdoing by public officials. The Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity agrees with this effort and has signed on in support of this legislation