Rick Frank over a Legal Planet has a nice post entitled “Preview of Coming Attractions: American Electric Power v. State of Connecticut.” It begins:
The U.S. Supreme Court recently announced the scheduling of oral arguments in the biggest (actually, the only) environmental case of its current Term: American Electric Power v. State of Connecticut. The justices will hear arguments on April 19th, and render their decision in this major climate change case by the end of June. Already, however, some interesting factoids and subplots have developed.
This case raises three distinct legal questions of interest to climate change mavens and environmental lawyers and academics generally: 1) whether the states and private land trusts that have brought this public nuisance action against the owners of Midwestern coal-fired power plants have standing to sue; 2) whether the federal common law of nuisance remains a viable legal theory in the climate change litigation arsenal or, instead, common law nuisance claims have been displaced by federal environmental statutes; and 3) whether plaintiffs’ efforts to invoke public nuisance law to address the climate change impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from defendants’ power plants constitute a non-justiciable “political question.”
JASON J. CZARNEZKI 