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A bedrock principle of patent law is that an applicant must sufficiently disclose the invention in exchange for the right to exclude. Essential to the disclosure requirement is enablement, which compels a patent applicant to enable a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA) to make and use the full scope of the claimed invention without undue experimentation. Enablement may be...

Our almost forty-year experience with landmark federal environmental statutes, demonstrates unequivocally that implementing grand and noble environmental goals is an arduous and difficult experience. California is now embarking on a similar project: implementing the country’s most ambitious greenhouse gas emissions limitations, including rolling back the state’s emissions to 1990 levels by 2020...

Standing doctrine is well-known to be a quagmire, plagued by inconsistent results and judicial dissension. Worse, leading scholars have cast doubt on its historical pedigree and conceptual underpinnings. Yet, there seems to be little prospect for a radical change in direction. This Article proposes a more modest doctrinal shift. The proposed approach is much simpler than the current test, but...

Climate change will increase risks significantly in many areas of society, and also will make many risks more uncertain and harder to measure. If our society is to survive climate change without significant human costs, we must develop robust institutions and practices to manage these risks. The insurance industry is our society’s primary financial risk manager and needs to play a leading role in...

Using California’s self-consciously internationalist approach to climate change regulation as a primary example, this Article examines constitutional limitations on state foreign affairs activities. In particular, by focusing on the prospect of California’s establishment of a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trading system and its eventual linkage with comparable systems in Europe and elsewhere...

It is generally agreed that the world would be better off with an international agreement to control greenhouse gas emissions. But it is not entirely clear that the leading emitters—the United States and China—would be better off with the agreement that would be in the world’s interest. The first problem is that as the largest emitters, the United States and China would probably have to bear a...

The individual and household sector generates roughly 30 to 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and is a potential source of prompt and large emissions reductions. Yet the assumption that only extensive government regulation will generate substantial reductions from the sector is a barrier to change, particularly in a political environment hostile to regulation. This Article demonstrates...

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol is the first global attempt to address a global environmental public goods problem with a market-based mechanism. The CDM is a carbon credit market where sellers, located exclusively in developing countries, can generate and certify emissions reductions that can be sold to buyers located in developed countries. Since 2004 it has grown...

Solving the climate change problem by limiting global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will necessitate action by the world’s two largest emitters, the United States and China. Neither has so far committed to quantitative emissions limits. Some argue that China cannot be engaged on the basis of its national interest in climate policy, on the ground that China’s national net benefits of limiting...

This Article seeks to reconstruct the public nuisance climate change cases Connecticut v. AEP and California v. General Motors to show that, while hardly perfect, nuisance litigation could form a reasonable basis for climate change regulation, at least as much as some of the other imperfect alternatives so far proposed. This nuisance system has promise because, as outlined here, it essentially...

Life without economic subordination is recognized around the world as a fundamental human right. When individuals are economically impoverished, they are more likely to not only offend, but also repeatedly offend, because poverty compounded with the imposed civil disabilities of a criminal conviction further socially isolate and minimize their life options. This factual inference is not only...

Expelled students have intense educational needs, yet few states protect their rights to alternative education during the period of expulsion or reinstatement to mainstream education following the period of expulsion. Instead of strengthening those rights, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) creates an incentive structure that encourages the exclusion of expelled students from all access to...

Specialty license plates are commonly seen displayed on cars across the United States. Certain states permit motorists to purchase a specialty license plate for an extra fee in order to allow the driver to affiliate with a particular cause while simultaneously raising money for nonprofit organizations associated with the plates. The introduction of specialty license plates bearing messages either...

Are county governments capable stewards of urban life? Across the country, millions of low-income households live in urban enclaves that rely on county government for their most proximate tier of general purpose local government. Material conditions in many of these neighborhoods are reminiscent of early twentieth-century rural poverty, while others are a dystopic vision of twenty-first century...