Dru Stevenson, Professor of Law

On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a much-awaited decision in Massachusetts v. EPA (05-1120), holding that the EPA does, in fact, have statutory authority to regulate greenhouse (the EPA has been denying that it could regulate carbon dioxide, even if it wanted to – which it doesn’t). The Court also ordered the EPA either to promulgate meaningful regulations, or offer some sophisticated scientific basis for not doing so. I must agree with Gary Feinerman, the Solicitor General for Illinois, that Mass v. EPA foreshadows a “more active role for States in attempting to drive the regulatory agenda at the national level." More specifically, it enhances the role of a state Attorney General to include intense involvement in national policy and federal administrative agencies. These cases came from the AG offices, not by public referendum in each petitioning state. Disclosure: I worked on this case during its nascent stage, very briefly, during my stint at the Connecticut Attorney Genera...

When I was a 1L, I remember wondering why we needed to plod through endless, outdated cases in order to learn the law. At the time, it seemed to me that it would have been more efficient for us to use a commercial outline - or at least a Hornbook- to master a subject like Contracts or Criminal Law... My pesky inquiries about this usually elicited one of two answers. First, the most common answer was that the professor thought all the commercial outlines were riddled with errors, completely worthless, and contradictory to what the professor believed about the subject. I found this answer troubling. Did the professors really know what was contained in every commercial study aid? They always cited one or two anecdotes where oblivious-and-scared students challenged prof's knowledge of her area of specialty with Steven Emmanuel's definitive holding on the issue. It was appropriate to be dismissive in such a case. Even so, what about the study aids written by professors at other law ...