September 30, 2004

First Monday in October: Examining the Supreme Court’s Environmental Docket

Each October the U.S. Supreme Court begins a new term. And, coinciding with the Court’s resumption of work, ELI holds its Associates seminar pre-viewing the Court’s newly docketed cases and reviewing those cases decided in the previous term.

During the 2003-2004 term, the Supreme Court heard and decided the greatest number of environmental cases in any session in its history. The Court handed down eight decisions, comprising a full 10 percent of last year’s total, each with important implications for regulatory policy and environmental protection generally.

On September 30, 2004, Edwin Kneedler (Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, U.S. Department of Justice) and Richard Lazarus (Georgetown University Law School Professor, and columnist for “In the Courts” in ELI’s The Environmental Forum) offered an insightful tour of the Court’s recent environmental decisions and their implications. These constitutional law experts covered Alaska v. EPA, DOT v. Public Citizen and Norton v. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance among decided cases and took a look at docketed matters such as Cooper Industries v. Aviall.