JASON J. CZARNEZKI

With my own growing interest in music, I have started to watch more music films, especially documentaries. While many are familiar with films like Eminem’s 8 Mile that illustrate social ills like the poverty of Detroit, I have been profoundly moved my two recent films that I saw and would highly recommend: 20 Feet from Stardom, about female backup vocalists (you’ll never listen to the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter in the same way) and Searching for Sugarman, a story of a singer-songwriter who you’ve never heard of that’s bigger than Elvis in South Africa. Next on my list is to see A Band Called Death, the story of an African-African heavy metal band during the Motown era.

Dear Website, Blog and Facebook readers,

You can now follow me on Twitter. @czarnezki

Hopefully I can figure out how to use this fancy new technology.

The Times has a cool interactive graphic here showing how NYC city has changed during the Bloomberg years…bike lanes, zoning, etc.

See here. As usual, the magazine’s graphics are great.

For those of you who teach Environmental Law, I would highly recommend Jim Salzman’s short essay "TEACHING POLICY INSTRUMENT CHOICE IN ENVIRONMENTAL LAW: THE FIVE P’S."

Check out the article. "The chances are pretty good that we will see additional states using emissions trading as their way of meeting these new federal requirements," says Franz Litz, a law professor and head of the Pace Energy and Climate Center at Pace Law School in New York state.

Gilbert and Sarah Kerlin Lecture on Environmental Law

Wednesday, September 25, 2013 5-6 p.m., Gerber Glass Moot Court Room, Pace Law School
Jason Czarnezki
Gilbert and Sarah Kerlin Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law
"New York City Rules! Regulatory Tools and the Environment"

Dan Farber at Legal Planet has an interesting post titled "The Long, Losing War Against Government Regulation." He lays out the various pro-environment/public health regulation that has been passed since the Reagan Administration and shows that Congress slowly has been expanding federal environmental regulation. I take no issue with any of his facts. He does however take an optimistic tone in the line with Obama’s quote of MLK, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." To this end, I only take issue and perhaps disagree with Farber’s final two sentences of his post: "The expansion of federal regulatory authority has been very slow — but the gains have been permanent, so anti-regulatory forces are losing the game a few feet at a time. This must be profoundly depressing for those who have never accepted the role of government regulation in protecting the public’s health and safety." Even the Washington Generals score some points, or, as my father would say, "even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once an a while." Yes, it’s true that along the way American slows moves towards justice, equality, and preserving our natural landscape. But the damage inflicted in this time is permanent and severe. The delay is part of the victory for anti-regulatory forces. Anti-regulatory forces may be the ones winning the game, just not as strongly as they would like.

My first real law job was working in the Bureau of Legal Services at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources doing work on wetlands regulation, in particular the state’s authority to regulate wetlands under Chapter 30 and the Wisconsin State Constitution as well as the state’s authority to take over jurisdiction over wetlands post-SWANCC as a result of 2001 WI Act 6. Wisconsin wetlands jurisprudence, with cases like Just v. Marinette Co., was considered to be constitutional jurisprudence due to Article IX, section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution. It provides that “the river Mississippi and the navigable waters leading into the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, and the carrying places between the same, shall be common highways and forever free, as well as to the inhabitants of the state as to the citizens of the United States.” I wrote about this extensively in my article "Environmentalism and the Wisconsin Constitution."

That is why the recent decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court regarding wetlands jurisprudence is so disappointing. There is excellent description and commentary here at Environmental Law Prof Blog by Robin Kundis Craig. As Robin notes, The Court’s "reinterpretation of Just and its reversal of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals divorced WDNR’s regulatory authority from its constitutional public trust doctrine duties." Might my favorite quote from Just v. Marinette County be no more? "An owner of land has no absolute and unlimited right to change the essential natural character of his land so as to use it for a purpose for which it was unsuited in its natural state and which injures the rights of others."

Some days I wake up to find interesting and random news on my various electronic devices. Today’s highlights so far:

(1) “Girls who play in dirt grow up healthier according to researcher”

(2) Climate change on pace to occur 10 times faster than any change recorded in past 65 million years, Stanford scientists say

(3) Rise in violence ‘linked to climate change’

(4) You should watch this you miss Saturday morning cartoons and/or like Alicia Keys and/or Jimmy Fallon and/or comedy and/or like The Gummi Bears: