One of the principal, if unexpected, results of the Supreme Court's 1992 decision in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Commission is the rise of background principles of property and nuisance law as a categorical defense to takings claims. Our writings on the background principles defense have...

The literature on the optimal regulation of judgment-proof firms has tended to focus on ex post policies such extended liability. But in the recent past information disclosure has emerged as an alternative or a complementary risk mitigation strategy. This paper uses a model of entrepreneurial...

Hydraulic fracturing has been the subject of much debate recently, both in the United States and increasingly in Europe. Advances in hydraulic fracturing technology have led to a shale gas boom in the United States, significantly lowering natural gas prices, and causing some foreign businesses...

Financial assurance rules, also known as financial responsibility or bonding requirements, foster cost internalization by requiring potential polluters to demonstrate the financial resources necessary to compensate for environmental damage that may arise in the future. Accordingly, assurance is...

Anthropogenic Environmental Degradation describes environmental degradation caused by effects or processes derived from human activities, as opposed to effects or processes that occur in the natural environment without human influences. There are a plethora of laws and regulations both, local...

Via technology and operations standards, U.S. regulation exerts an important influence over worldwide marine safety standards. But in addition, several other aspects of U.S. law deserve wider international consideration and adoption. First, the Oil Pollution Act’s natural resource damage...

Financal assurance rules, also known as financial responsibility or bonding requirements, foster cost internalization by requiring potential polluters to demonstrate the financial resources necessary to compensate for environmental damage that may arise in the future. Accordingly, assurance is...

This paper investigates the occurrences at the Sixth Conference of the Parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which took place in The Hague, The Netherlands, from the 13th to 25th November of 2000. Since the conference did not reach an agreement there...

In July 2008, the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) launched North America’s first revenue-neutral carbon tax reform. The tax, which applied to all combustion sources of all fossil fuels, was introduced at a rate of CAD 10 per tonne of CO2, with a schedule for annual increases of CAD...