Jay Austin

Senior Attorney
202-558-3103
austin@eli.org

Expertise

• Armed Conflict and the Environment: armed conflict and the environment—environmental consequences of war and international legal framework governing armed conflict
• Environmental Impact Assessment: environmental impact asseenvironmental impact assessment (EIA)—National Environmental Policy Act and issues related to EIA at the federal and state levels
• Judiciary: environmental law and the judiciary—U.S. Supreme Court and other federal court cases and recent decisions and trends in judicial decisionmaking
• Law: constitutional environmental law—constitutional law topics that affect environmental law, including the Commerce Clause, “takings” and property rights, “standing” to bring environmental lawsuits, and Tenth and Eleventh Amendments
• Water: water law—Clean Water Act, wetlands protection, and western water issues

Profile

Jay Austin directs the Institute’s Endangered Environmental Laws Program, a major initiative focusing on the intersection of U.S. constitutional and environmental law and recent trends in the federal courts. In that role, he produces scholarly research and commentary on environmental litigation; key areas of constitutional law, including the Commerce Clause, Fifth Amendment takings, and Article III standing; and on proposals to amend major federal laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act. Based in Portland, Oregon, he has local expertise on environmental issues in the Pacific Northwest. He also maintains specialties in water pollution law, EIA, and other procedures for public participation in environmental decisionmaking. He headed the Institute’s multi-year research project on the environmental consequences of war.

Education

• J.D., University of Virginia School of Law, 1990
• B.A., Political Philosophy, James Madison College at Michigan State University, 1985

Selected Publications

Kathryn Mengerink, Adam Schempp, and Jay Austin, Ocean and Coastal Ecosystem-Based Management: Implementation Handbook (Envtl. L. Inst. 2009).

Adam Schempp, Kathryn Mengerink, and Jay Austin, Expanding the Use of Ecosystem-Based Management in the Coastal Zone Management Act (Envtl. L. Inst. 2009).

Brief of Environmental Law Institute as Amicus Curiae (co-author), Rapanos v. United States and Carabell v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Nos. 04-1043, -1384 (U.S. filed Jan. 2006).

Symposium, International Responses to the Environmental Impacts of War, Geo. Envtl. L. Rev., Summer 2005.

Limiting State Experimentation Under the “Dormant” Commerce Clause and The Eleventh Amendment, in Redefining Federalism: Listening to the States in Shaping “Our Federalism” (Envtl. L. Inst. 2004).

Jay E. Austin, John M. Carter II, Bradley D. Klein & Scott E. Schang, Judging NEPA: A “Hard Look” at Judicial Decisionmaking under the National Environmental Policy Act, (Envtl. L. Inst. 2004).

Jay E. Austin & Scott Schang, The Rise (and Fall?) of Fundamentalist Federalism, Envtl. F., Sept./Oct. 2004.

Jay E. Austin & Carl Bruch, Legal Mechanisms for Addressing Wartime Damage to Tropical Forests, in War and Tropical Forests: Conservation in Areas of Armed Conflict (Food Product Press 2003).

Jay E. Austin & Carl Bruch eds., The Environmental Consequences of War: Legal, Economic, and Scientific Perspectives (Cambridge Univ. Press 2000).