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An Empirical Study of the Impact of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) on the Production of Fuel Ethanol in the U.S.
Get PDFThe Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program, which mandates the commercialization of biofuels through 2022, is the United States’ most significant piece of legislation regarding renewable energy. It was first passed in 2005 and revised and expanded in 2007 in order to create a viable market for biofuels based on the policy goals of enhancing domestic U.S. energy security, reducing transportation-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and stimulating rural economic development.
The RFS requires minimum levels of consumption for different kinds of biofuels and requires increasing blending amounts of biofuels into gasoline and diesel fuels by producers and importers each year. Mandates and targets for biofuels as required by the RFS are not a policy exclusive just to the U.S. Sixty-four other countries mandate fixed quantities of ethanol use in gasoline to generally stimulate renewable energy use and to specifically promote production of biofuels.
In the past few years, there have been challenges in complying with the RFS in the U.S. As a result, legislative mandates were modified and reduced to respond to these difficulties. Proponents of the RFS argue that the policy reduces the risk of investing in renewable fuel projects, enhances the country’s energy security as well as the rural sector, and addresses climate change concerns. On the other hand, critics argue that policy makers are “picking a winner” by funding biofuels over other types of alternative energy sources, and mandates for biofuels have presented unintended consequences in other areas, such as the food markets, land use patterns and the current gasoline-market infrastructure. Many studies have observed beneficial impacts of mandates on the agricultural markets and on the environment. However, there are very few empirical studies of the actual impact of the RFS on the development of the biofuel industry and none that use an industrial policy approach to analyze this issue.
In this Article, we intend to fill this gap and provide an empirical study addressing whether the RFS is an effective policy instrument that incentivizes an efficient and sustainable development of the biofuels industry. Our analysis uses data from the first-generation ethanol industry between the years 2000 and 2013, and we find that the industry life cycle mediates the effects of the RFS in contributing to production-related economies of scale. More specifically, our empirical findings suggest that the RFS had a significant positive effect on the production capacity of firstgeneration ethanol firms during the early stages of development of the first-generation ethanol industry. But the RFS does not have a statistically significant effect on plant or firm capacity after the first-generation ethanol market entered a mature stage in its product life cycle
Finding Common Ground Across Race and Religion: Judicial Conceptions of Political Community in Public Schools
Get PDFThis article opens with a brief discussion of the recent controversies over race, inclusion, and community on American college campuses, focusing on the events at Yale University during the 2015 fall semester. Yale’s controversy is fascinating as one of the most recent, high-profile events that invites a discussion of a deep and persistent issue in American society: how do we construct and maintain a stable political community characterized by enduring differences? I use the Yale example as my jumping-off point for interrogating this question in the context of Supreme Court cases on race and public education, and religion/ideology and public education.
My focus on judicial opinions dealing with public education is motivated by several considerations: elementary and secondary public schools, in particular, constitute perhaps the most direct point of contact between most American children and the state. Thus, these institutions have the opportunity to shape future participants in the American political community and to impart the particular values that will help constitute that community. Relatedly, my focus on judicial conceptions of political community in the public school context provides the key attraction of hearing major national political actors discuss these themes within the illuminating format of principle-based judicial opinions. Given this, and given the centrality of public education, racial identity, and religious identity in American society, I am presuming that the dynamics that these judicial opinions illuminate will illuminate the dynamics present within other types of communities in America.
In this article, I make three primary claims. First, within the judicial opinions that grapple with racial and religious/ideological difference in the context of public education, one might glean a set of judicial beliefs common to both regarding the adhesive force of public education in creating and maintaining political community. More precisely, I will claim that judges have seen public schools as a cultural adhesive force across both types of plurality. The specific manner in which public schools bind students together is by virtue of the physical proximity of students to one another, and their observation in, participation in, and creation of a common culture.
However, this doctrinal comparison yields a key difference too, and this constitutes my second claim: in the race and public education context, the central problem that has appeared in the doctrine—and the main problem that has animated judicial conceptions of community in that context—has been the problem of community-creation. Judges have largely pondered the justifications and limits upon the state’s authority to create racial plurality in public schools. Such arguments proceed from background assumptions of minimal racial plurality absent the contemplated state actions. In contrast, in the religion/ideology and public education context, the major cases and judicial arguments on plurality within public schools are preoccupied with the problems of community-maintenance. Judges have pondered the justifications and limits upon state actions toward maintaining stable communities in public schools in the face of individual claims of religious freedom and competing state claims favoring uniformity. The background presumption in these cases is one of inevitable religious/ideological plurality in public schools, even absent the contemplated state actions.
Finally, I offer a third and final claim: for community-builders, maintenance problems are easier than creation problems. This point, in turn, suggests that, while plurality may be inevitable, plurality within a communal structure holds greater hope for lines of division to be overcome. This is because the culture intrinsic to a community can serve as an adhesive across lines of division. Thus, to the extent that one finds the goals of community and unity to be worthwhile, at least some of the time, this observation implies that mechanisms that situate plurality within community are often preferable to letting plurality persist between distinct communities
Public Restrooms and the Distorting of Transgender Identity
Get PDFThe sex-separated public restroom, a ubiquitous feature of our built environment, has been at the vortex of litigation filed by state officials across the country challenging the Obama administration’s attempt to assure that transgender people have access to safe restrooms. Tracing the ongoing federal litigation in North Carolina surrounding the passage of House Bill 2, this Article argues that this seemingly mundane architectural space has in fact driven the litigation strategies of all parties to these cases. In insisting that access to public restrooms be based on biological sex, state officials rely on an outmoded nineteenth century cultural vision of women as weak and vulnerable, and therefore in need of a separate restroom to protect them from predatory men in the public realm. In contrast, in a bold attempt to protect transgender people, the Obama administration took for granted that public restrooms should be sex-separated. The administration insisted, however, that individuals be permitted to access the men’s or the women’s facility based on their gender identities. In so doing, the federal government ignored that gender identity is not binary and, accordingly, that there are individuals for whom there is no safe, accessible restroom in public places. This Article concludes by proposing that sex-segregated public restrooms be replaced by all-gender, multi-user facilities that protect the privacy and safety concerns of all patrons, while discriminating against no one
Environmental Dispute Resolution Program: Year 5 Accomplishments: February 2016 – January 2017
Get PDFThis report covers activities for the fifth full year of the EDR Program, running from February 1, 2016 through January 31, 2017. The Stegner Center’s EDR Program encompasses four inter-related categories of activity designed to support and expand the use of EDR in Utah and the Mountain West: academic instruction, capacity-building, public education, and facilitation/mediation services
Listen Up: Conversation Analysis Shows How Law Students Fail-and Succeed-in a Brief Advice Clinic
Get PDFPeople with important legal matters are often unable to afford representation. As a result, most parties with family law cases handle these cases themselves. Often, they rely upon brief advice clinics to help them do so. Law schools are required to provide pro bono opportunities for all law students. These pro bono opportunities can include volunteering at brief advice clinics together with volunteer attorneys. Is this a match made in heaven or a disaster waiting to happen?
Pro bono law students vary in their professional demeanor and skills interacting with clients in a brief advice clinic. They have a strong desire to help and to display their knowledge, but this sometimes creates problems and results in the clients getting less than adequate services. The attorneys who volunteer also vary in their skills as supervisors. Some provide a flood of information for the student, covering much more than the student can absorb and the particular client will need to know. Others are able to simultaneously instruct the student about the law and process while giving the student scripts to convey information and advice to the clients. Finally, these clients are challenging to interview and counsel. They invariably raise additional questions, but do not always provide the context or reason for their questions. This study closely analyzes the student-client dialogues and the student-attorney dialogues to identify what works and what does not at a student-staffed pro se clinic
The Bail Book: A Comprehensive Look at Bail in America\u27s Criminal Justice System - Introduction
Get PDFMass incarceration is one of the greatest social problems facing the United States today. America incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other country and is one of only two countries that requires arrested individuals to pay bail to be released from jail while awaiting trial. After arrest, the bail decision is the single most important cause of mass incarceration, yet this decision is often neglected since it is made in less than two minutes. Shima Baradaran Baughman draws on constitutional rights and new empirical research to show how we can reform bail in America. Tracing the history of bail, she demonstrates how it has become an oppressive tool of the courts that disadvantages minority and poor defendants and shows how we can reform bail to alleviate mass incarceration. By implementing these reforms, she argues, we can restore constitutional rights and release more defendants, while lowering crime rates
The Role of Natural Gas in the Clean Power Plan
Get PDFThis article overviews the role that natural gas has played over time in the United States. It identifies and surveys five key historical roles that natural gas has served: (1) as an early competitor for lighting, (2) as a nuisance byproduct in oil production, (3) as a heating and appliance fuel, especially as pipeline technology improved, (4) as a catalyst for legal change during the energy crises, and (5) as an increasingly important fuel for electricity production. The article then examines the likely role of natural gas as way to address climate change in the United States, using the ideas of a bridge fuel, a dead end, and the Clean Power Plan as lenses. Commonalities and differences in models estimating natural gas use under the Clean Power Plan are identified and summarized
Marijuana and the Workplace: How High are the Stakes for Employees?
Get PDFThe state legalization of marijuana has generated an array of questions and challenges for industries such as law enforcement, banking, and even real estate. Moreover, it has created a considerable amount of tension between federal and state law. Despite the legalization of marijuana in various states, employees are still in jeopardy of being fired for their “legal” marijuana use. Based on statutory interpretation, and federal and state court precedent, the federal ADA offers no protections to employees terminated for marijuana use due to the fact that marijuana remains a Schedule I controlled substance pursuant to the CSA. Few states have, however, implemented supplemental provisions to protect employees’ rights. In other words, employees run a “high” risk of adverse employment action if they use a controlled substance made legal by various states
Zero Sum Games in Pollution Control: The Games We Create versus the Games We Discover
Get PDFEnvironmental pollution lands us in zero-sum games. The more interesting question is: Do we discover these games? Or do we invent them? In other words, are there hard environmental limits on how much anthropogenic pollution natural systems can absorb, which we eventually discover? Or do we create zero-sum games for pollution purely as a result of our own goals for both ecosystems and social-ecological systems (SESs, a recognition that human societies are both part of and depend upon functioning ecosystems)? In fact, we do both, and the intersection of the two in a climate change era is worth examination
Accountability and Decision Making in Autonomous Warfare: Who is Responsible?
Get PDFThis Article addresses the use of autonomous weapons systems(“AWS”). This Article only concerns itself with AWS used for offensive purposes. That is distinct from defensive weapons systems, including Israel’s Iron Dome2 and U.S. missile defense systems.3 Similarly, this Article does not address use of AWS for purposes of neutralizing Improvised Explosive Devices (“IED”) or evacuating a wounded soldier.
The use of AWS potentially minimizes risks to soldiers—at least in the short term. It suggests sleek technology. The dead are a hazy visual on a screen. It is antiseptic, as neither the smell of burning flesh nor the sound of agony can be heard by those programming the AWS or those sitting behind a screen observing the effects of a “hit.” Autonomous warfare has also been positively portrayed in Hollywood movies; technological sophistication inherently possesses an undeniable “cool” factor that is engaging, engrossing, and compelling. However, the positive lens with which it is viewed through Hollywood is a limited glimpse of its role.
Weapons created for the purpose of autonomously determining when the nation-state can kill a human being raises profoundly important questions regarding humanity, ethics, and defense. While the use of force by the nation-state is regulated, whether by international law or rules of engagement, the introduction of AWS challenges the notion of whether—and at what point—proposed decision making should be removed from human control and judgment