Environmental Law Research Guide: Other Sources

Environmental groups and others brought action under Endangered Species Act of 1973 to enjoin Tennessee Valley Authority from completing dam and impounding section of Little Tennessee River. The Supreme Court, Mr. Chief Justice Burger, held that Endangered Species Act of 1973 prohibited completion of dam, where operation of dam would either eradicate known population of the snail darter, an endangered species, or destroy its critical habitat.

The Supreme Court, Justice Stevens, held: Clean Air Act authorizes the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles in the event that it forms a “judgment” that such emissions contribute to climate change; and EPA can avoid taking regulatory action with respect to greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do.

Justice KENNEDY concluded that the Sixth Circuit correctly recognized that a water or wetland constitutes “navigable waters” under the Clean Water Act if it possesses a “significant nexus” to waters that are navigable in fact or that could reasonably be so made, but did not consider all the factors necessary to determine that the lands in question had, or did not have, the requisite nexus.

With regard to judicial review of an agency's construction of the statute which it administers, if Congress has not directly spoken to the precise question at issue, the question for the court is whether the agency's answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute.

In the second of two episodes, Quentin Pair continues a discussion on his career and environmental justice, and shares his thoughts on the future of EPA with Phillip Dupré, a Senior Attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, ENRD - Environmental Defense Section, and past member of the Section’s Leadership Development Program. This podcast was recorded in late 2020.

In the first of two episodes, Quentin Pair discusses his career, which included serving as senior trial attorney for the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice for many years and working on environmental justice issues while at the EPA, with Phillip Dupré, a Senior Attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, ENRD - Environmental Defense Section, and past member of the Section’s Leadership Development Program. This podcast was recorded in late 2020.

With its intricate layers of international, federal, and state protections, environmental law is more established than animal law. In this podcast episode, Glenda Valdez, a recent graduate of Lewis & Clark Law School, interviews Professor Randall Abate, Assistant Dean for Environmental Studies and a Professorial Lecturer in Law at The George Washington University Law School, about the experiences of these two fields and how they can work together to secure mutual gains.