The Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review: Top 20 Articles
| Date | 01 August 2017 |
| Author | Linda K. Breggin, Kline Moore, Marian Mikhail, and Michael P. Vandenbergh |
8-2017 NEWS & ANALYSIS 47 ELR 10649
C O M M E N T
The Environmental Law and Policy
Annual Review: Top 20 Articles
by Linda K. Breggin, Kline Moore, Marian Mikhail, and Michael P. Vandenbergh
Linda K. Breggin is a Senior Attorney with the Environmental Law Institute and Adjunct Professor, Vanderbilt
University Law School.
Marian Mikhail and Kline Moore are recent graduates of Vanderbilt University Law School. Michael P. Vandenbergh is the David Daniels Allen
Distinguished Chair
of Law and Co-Director of the Energy, Environment, and Land Use Program, Vanderbilt University Law School.
T
he Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review
(ELPAR) is published by the Environmental Law
Insti-
tute’s (ELI’s) Environmental Law Reporter
in part-
nership with Vanderbilt University Law School.
is edition
marks ELPAR’s 10th anniversary. In accordance with its
objective to provide a vehicle for the movement of ideas from
the academy to the policymaking realm, ELPAR has provided
a forum each year for the presentation and discussion of some
of the most creative and feasible environmental law and policy
proposals culled from the legal academic literature.
e student editors of ELPAR, with input from the course
instructors, narrow down the pool of environmental articles
published during the prior year to a list of about 20 contend-
ers, all of which meet ELPAR’s criteria of persuasiveness,
impact, feasibility, and creativity. From this group of articles,
the ELPAR student editors—in consultation with ELPAR’s
Advisory Committee, Environmental Law Institute sta, and
the course instructors—select several articles to re-publish in
shortened form with commentaries from leading practitioners
and policymakers.
1
is year, ELPAR elected for the rst time to share the
year’s list of top 20 articles, found in Table 1. Of the 20 arti-
cles outlined below, seven call for a federal agency—such as
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Depart-
ment of Interior, or the U.S. Department of Agriculture—to
change regu lations, policies, or practices. ree articles envi-
sion explicit presidential action through either the federal
procurement, regulatory review, or the federal agency budget
process. In addition, three articles focus on actions that could
be taken by state or local governments, t wo by the judiciary,
and one by private parties. Four articles contemplate actions
that can be taken at the international level.
1. For a full description of the meth odology used for selecting articles, please
refer to Environmental Law Institute, Env ironmental Law and Policy
Annual Rev iew, Publications, Trends in Environmental Law Scholarship
Methodology: https://www.eli.org/environmental-law-policy-annual-review/
publications (last visited May 10, 2017).
e student editors categorize the top 20 articles using
the Environmental Law Reporter’s topic categories. Because
articles do not always t neatly into a category, and often
topic categories are interrelated, such as energy and climate,
articles often are assigned a primary and secondary topic.
Primary topics addressed in the top 20 articles are: climate
change (12); governance (5); and energy (3). Secondary topics
include: climate change (2); energy (3); governance (3); land
use (4); air (1); and water (1). When both primary and second-
ary topics are considered, 14 articles addressed climate change
in some manner.
is year’s pool of articles came from both general and
environmental law journals. Eleven out of the top 20 articles
came from specialty journals focusing on environmental
issues, while the other nine articles were originally published
in general law review journals. Only two of these articles were
published in the same journal, the Harvard Environmental
Law Review.
e lead authors of the articles came from a range of law
schools, but the following universities had two professors who
each published a piece, a s a lead author, that wa s included in
the top 20: Georgetown University Law School; University of
Texas-Austin Law School; Florida State Law School; and Uni-
versity of Minnesota Law School. e pool of articles this year
also featured one practitioner who practices law in the United
States Air Force as a Judge Advocate Ocer.
e char t below lists every a rticle included in the top 20
with a brief description of each article’s big idea. e descrip-
tions of the big ideas presented in the articles were draf ted by
the student editors and reect the key points they thought
made an important contribution to t he environmental law
and policy literature. Links a re provided to the fu ll articles
and most of the links contain the authors’ own abstracts.
Copyright © 2017 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.
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