State Imperiled Species Legislation

State wildlife conservation programs are essential to accomplishing the national goal of extinction prevention. By virtue of their constitutional powers, their expertise, and their on-the-ground personnel, states could—in theory—accomplish far more than the federal agencies directly responsible for implementing the Endangered Species Act (ESA). States plausibly argue that they can catalyze collaborative conservation that brings together key stakeholders to improve conditions for imperiled species. Bills to revise the ESA seek to delegate greater authority to states. We evaluated states’ imperiled species legislation to determine their legal capacity to employ the key regulatory tools that prompt collaborative conservation. All but four states possess statutory programs to identify species on the brink of extinction. Most of them include both animals protected under the ESA and wildlife imperiled just within the boundaries of the state. Thirty-four states legislate imperiled plant protection programs. States generally fail to prohibit habitat impairment by private parties, lack permit programs to minimize incidental harms to species and spur habitat conservation, and do not restrict state agency actions that undermine species recovery. Compared to the key regulatory programs of the ESA that prompt stakeholders to collaborate on conservation, state laws—in general—reflect a more permissive attitude. Though state laws, in the aggregate, only weakly support cooperative federalism, some state legislative provisions are very strong. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin even go beyond the ESA in their protective measures. Major funding increases to pay for conservation measures could overcome weak agency regulatory authority, but prospects for a spending spree are dim. Therefore, some state legislative reform will be necessary to implement stronger cooperative federalism under the ESA

Introducing Jus ante Bellum as a cosmopolitan approach to humanitarian intervention

Cosmopolitans often argue that the international community has a humanitarian responsibility to intervene militarily in order to protect vulnerable individuals from violent threats and to pursue the establishment of a condition of cosmopolitan justice based on the notion of a ‘global rule of law’. The purpose of this article is to argue that many of these cosmopolitan claims are incomplete and untenable on cosmopolitan grounds because they ignore the systemic and chronic structural factors that underwrite the root causes of these humanitarian threats. By way of examining cosmopolitan arguments for humanitarian military intervention and how systemic problems are further ignored in iterations of the Responsibility to Protect, this article suggests that many contemporary cosmopolitan arguments are guilty of focusing too narrowly on justifying a responsibility to respond to the symptoms of crisis versus demanding a similarly robust justification for a responsibility to alleviate persistent structural causes. Although this article recognizes that immediate principles of humanitarian intervention will, at times, be necessary, the article seeks to draw attention to what we are calling principles of Jus ante Bellum (right before war) and to stress that current cosmopolitan arguments about humanitarian intervention will remain insufficient without the incorporation of robust principles of distributive global justice that can provide secure foundations for a more thoroughgoing cosmopolitan condition of public right

Between history and values: A study on the nature of interpretation in international law

My thesis discusses the place of evaluative judgements in the interpretation of general international law. It concentrates on two questions. First, whether it is possible to interpret international legal practices without making an evaluative judgement about the point or value that provides the best justification of these practices. Second, whether the use of evaluative judgements in international legal interpretation threatens to undermine the objectivity of international law, the neutrality of international lawyers or the consensual and voluntary basis of the international legal system. I answer both questions in the negative. As regards the first, I argue that international legal practice has an interpretive structure, which combines appeals to the history of international practice with appeals to the principles and values that these practices are best understood as promoting. This interpretive structure is apparent not only in the claims of international lawyers about particular rules of international law (here I use the rule of estoppel as an example) but also in the most basic intuitions of international theorists about the theory and sources of general international law. I then argue that some popular concerns to the effect that the exercise of evaluation in the interpretation of international law will undermine the coherence or the usefulness of the discipline are generally unwarranted. The fact that international legal practice has an interpretive structure does not entail that propositions of international law are only subjectively true, that the interpreter enjoys license to manipulate their meaning for self-serving purposes, or that international law will collapse under the weight of irresolvable disagreements, divisions and conflicts about its proper interpretation

State Imperiled Species Legislation

State wildlife conservation programs are essential to accomplishing the national goal of extinction prevention. By virtue of their constitutional powers, their expertise, and their on-the-ground personnel, states could—in theory—accomplish far more than the federal agencies directly responsible for implementing the Endangered Species Act (ESA). States plausibly argue that they can catalyze collaborative conservation that brings together key stakeholders to improve conditions for imperiled species. Bills to revise the ESA seek to delegate greater authority to states. We evaluated states’ imperiled species legislation to determine their legal capacity to employ the key regulatory tools that prompt collaborative conservation. All but four states possess statutory programs to identify species on the brink of extinction. Most of them include both animals protected under the ESA and wildlife imperiled just within the boundaries of the state. Thirty- four states legislate imperiled plant protection programs. States generally fail to prohibit habitat impairment by private parties, lack permit programs to minimize incidental harms to species and spur habitat conservation, and do not restrict state agency actions that undermine species recovery. Compared to the key regulatory programs of the ESA that prompt stakeholders to collaborate on conservation, state laws—in general—reflect a more permissive attitude. Though state laws, in the aggregate, only weakly support cooperative federalism, some state legislative provisions are very strong. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin even go beyond the ESA in their protective measures. Major funding increases to pay for conservation measures could overcome weak agency regulatory authority, but prospects for a spending spree are dim. Therefore, some state legislative reform will be necessary to implement stronger cooperative federalism under the ESA

State Imperiled Species Legislation

State wildlife conservation programs are essential to accomplishing the national goal of extinction prevention. By virtue of their constitutional powers, their expertise, and their on-the-ground personnel, states could—in theory—accomplish far more than the federal agencies directly responsible for implementing the Endangered Species Act (ESA). States plausibly argue that they can catalyze collaborative conservation that brings together key stakeholders to improve conditions for imperiled species. Bills to revise the ESA seek to delegate greater authority to states. We evaluated states’ imperiled species legislation to determine their legal capacity to employ the key regulatory tools that prompt collaborative conservation. All but four states possess statutory programs to identify species on the brink of extinction. Most of them include both animals protected under the ESA and wildlife imperiled just within the boundaries of the state. Thirty-four states legislate imperiled plant protection programs. States generally fail to prohibit habitat impairment by private parties, lack permit programs to minimize incidental harms to species and spur habitat conservation, and do not restrict state agency actions that undermine species recovery. Compared to the key regulatory programs of the ESA that prompt stakeholders to collaborate on conservation, state laws—in general—reflect a more permissive attitude. Though state laws, in the aggregate, only weakly support cooperative federalism, some state legislative provisions are very strong. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin even go beyond the ESA in their protective measures. Major funding increases to pay for conservation measures could overcome weak agency regulatory authority, but prospects for a spending spree are dim. Therefore, some state legislative reform will be necessary to implement stronger cooperative federalism under the ESA