Professor Frank Comments on Supreme Court and EPA for Greenwire
Professor Richard Frank commented for Greenwire on the continuing controversy on Capitol Hill over the 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA. The article, which has been republished by other publications including the New York Times, examines the political battle in Congress over the ruling, which held that greenhouse gases could be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
Interpretations of the ruling vary widely among Congressional lawmakers, the article notes, according to their stance on climate change and environmental regulation generally. "As with many things related to climate change and Congress, the truth is somewhere in the middle," Professor Frank states, explaining that Republicans are technically right in saying the Supreme Court didn't require EPA to find that greenhouse gases were harmful and therefore needed to be regulated, but Democrats are correct that once the endangerment finding was made by EPA, the agency had to regulate greenhouse emissions.
Frank, a 1974 graduate of King Hall, is the founding Director of the new California Environmental Law and Policy Center at UC Davis School of Law.