Environmental Law; Developments, Setbacks, and Prospects

Abstract

US climate law has been weakened in recent years through changes in governance and an emergent pattern of overlapping institutional restraint conceptualized within this paper as the “web of deference.” Environmental advocates may currently seem powerless to effect real change, but this is not the case. Advocates can best respond to the current circumstances by engaging in careful venue shopping, seeking to try important cases in state and international courts to sidestep an unreceptive federal judiciary, or by slowing deregulation in federal courts, trying cases that are unlikely to be appealed up to the Supreme Court.