Water rights and environmental damage: an enquiry into stewardship in the context of abstraction licensing reform in England and Wales

The intersection of private rights and public responsibilities lies at the heart of both environmental and property law. This article considers this intersection in the context of debates about property ownership and notions of environmental stewardship. These form the background to considering shifts in water rights law in England and Wales and the extent to which they can be said to exhibit or exemplify a shift towards stewardship. Section 27 of the Water Act 2003 is analysed as this authorises revocation or variation of an abstraction licence without compensation in order to protect waters or aquatic flora and fauna from “serious damage”. Because regulatory abstraction licensing is a modern overlay on the common law, but one which has protected many existing abstractors from restrictions on their rights, section 27 might be regarded as strongly indicative of a stewardship shift in water rights. However, I argue that greater attention needs to be paid to the wider context within which this provision operates before it can be deployed as an unambiguous pro-stewardship example. I suggest that a range of related regulatory, economic and interpretive factors are likely to lead in practice to limited direct legal intrusion on private water rights. The case of section 27 serves as a ‘bottom up’ example of a need for circumspection about whether any specific formal, doctrinal reform is likely to exemplify, or support, a shift towards stewardship in water or property law, and draws out some of the complex relations between public and private interests than characterise stewardship

Delegational Delusions: Why Judges Should Be Able To Delegate Reasonable Authority Over Stated Supervised Release Conditions

This Note examines the constitutionality of allowing a probation officer the discretion to either impose or forego particular conditions of a supervised release, depending on the officer\u27s assessment of the defendant\u27s needs. Two federal Circuits allow probation officers to have such discretion; the majority have held that such arrangements violate Article III of the Constitution, which makes imposing a sentence an exclusively judicial task. In this Note, the author investigates the history of delegation of judicial function to non Article-III officers and examines the split in federal courts over this particular issue, ultimately advocating for the adoption of the so-called pragmatic approach used by the minority circuits allowing such arrangements

Shaping the Success of Social Impact Bonds in the United States: Lessons Learned from the Privatization of U.S. Prisons

American government officials are starting to experiment with a novel government-funding and privatization structure known as a social impact bond ( SIB ). An SIB is a contract between a government agency and a private entity in which the government agrees to pay the private entity an agreed-upon sum only if it can meet certain goals or outcomes. Currently, SIBs exist both globally and domestically, and are targeted to solve perpetual social ills such as the high homelessness and recidivism rates plaguing certain communities. By analogizing the problems facing private prisons to the potential problems facing the use of SIBs, this Note details the privatization challenges that government officials will likely face as they implement SIBs. Most importantly, this Note is the first to propose how government officials implementing SIBs can overcome the traditional obstacles facing privatization schemes—both through the structure of SIBs and through additional contractual solutions. Finally, the Note concludes with a discussion about how elements of SIBs can be incorporated to improve existing privatization models such as private prisons, and how SIBs alter the existing debate about privatization in this country

Towards an Intellectual Property Rights Strategy for Innovation in Europe

On October 13, 2009 the Science and Technology Options Assessment Panel (STOA) together with Knowledge4Innovation/The Lisbon Forum, supported by Technopolis Consulting Group and TNO, organised a half-day workshop entitled ‘Towards an Intellectual Property Rights Strategy for Innovation in Europe’. This workshop was part of the 1st European Innovation Summit at the European Parliament which took place on 13 October and 14 October 2009. It addressed the topics of the evolution and current issues concerning the European Patent System as well as International Protection and Enforcement of IPR (with special consideration of issues pertaining to IP enforcement in the Digital Environment). Conclusions drawn point to the benefits of a comprehensive European IPR strategy, covering a broad range of IP instruments and topics