2024 Issue of the Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review
ELR August 2024 ELPAR Cover
Thursday, September 12, 2024

The Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review (ELPAR) is published annually in the August issue of The Environmental Law Reporter (ELR) in collaboration with Vanderbilt University Law School (VULS) and ELI. Each year, Vanderbilt Law students work with an expert advisory committee, senior staff from ELI, and Vanderbilt law professors to identify some of the year’s best academic articles that include creative and feasible law and policy proposals. 

Federal Forest Wildfires, Climate, and Liability
Smokey the Bear
Thursday, November 9, 2023
This past summer, devastating fires ravaged Hawai’i and smoke from Canada’s record-breaking wildfire season blanketed communities across the American East. The fires offered a vivid reminder of the destructive capabilities of wildfires such as those that burned on American shores during the record- breaking 2020 wildfire season that choked western cities.
NEPA Compliance and Litigation: Maybe Not as Burdensome as Some Think
Courthouse
Wednesday, May 5, 2021

In “Measuring the NEPA Litigation Burden: A Review of 1,499 Federal Court Cases,” Prof. John C. Ruple and Kayla M. Race quantitatively demonstrate that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) compliance and litigation burdens may be overstated—findings they argue should inform any revisions to NEPA. The article was originally published in Lewis & Clark Law School’s Environmental Law in 2020. The piece was also selected as a top 20 article for the Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review in 2020, an ELI-Vanderbilt Law School project that identifies innovative environmental law and policy proposals each year.

ELPAR 2020: Opportunities and Challenges for FERC to Price Carbon Emissions
Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Electricity generation, one of the leading sources of greenhouse gas emissions, rarely accounts for the social cost of damages caused by carbon dioxide emissions. Embedding these costs into market rates is one way to address the pressing need for decarbonization. In this year’s Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review (ELPAR), a special issue of The Environmental Law Reporter, authors Bethany Davis Noll and Burcin Unel argue that addressing the price of emissions falls within the authority of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The authors examine how imposing a cost on carbon aligns with FERC’s main goal of ensuring just and reasonable rates, and they explore opportunities and limits for FERC’s authority.

Public Nuisance Lawsuits May Mitigate Meat Industry’s Environmental Impact
cows grazing in a field
Wednesday, April 15, 2020

In “Animal Agriculture Liability for Climatic Nuisance: A Path Forward for Climate Change Litigation?,” Prof. Daniel E. Walters lays out a new path for climate litigation: environmental litigators should bring federal public nuisance suits to remedy environmental harms caused by animal agriculture.

2020 Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review Winners Announced
Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Each year, the Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review (ELPAR)—a collaboration between Vanderbilt University Law School (VULS) and ELI—identifies articles that propose innovative law and policy approaches to pressing environmental problems. This year's awardees propose creative approaches to a range of cutting-edge environmental issues:

Reforming Selective Enforcement of Trade Laws in the Energy and Fisheries Sectors
Monday, August 5, 2019

The “fairness” of free trade agreements is front and center in today’s often rancorous political dialogue—but rarely is the environment a top-tier consideration in the debate. In a timely article, Vanderbilt University Law School Prof. Timothy Meyer offers a valuable environmental perspective on trade agreements that deserves attention. Professor Meyer offers empirical evidence that selective enforcement of environmental laws is “considerably more pervasive than commonly thought.” The result, he contends, is that trade agreements can undermine environmental interests in the energy and fisheries sectors, the most traded commodity and the most traded food respectively.