A Slash-and-Burn Expedition Through the Law of Environmental Standing - Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife

The Lujan decision will be assessed firstly, by summarizing the decision in the Case section of this Note. Secondly, the Background section will explore the history of standing litigation with a focus on cases with factual similarities to Lujan. This exploration will include an analysis of the effect of the National Wildlife Federation [hereinafter NWF] case, thus demonstrating standing doctrine as it stood when Lujan was decided. Thirdly, in the Analysis section, three key aspects of the Lujan majority opinion will be analyzed, along with the dissenting and concurring opinions. This analysis will lead to the realization that the era of liberal grants of standing to environmental plaintiffs has come to an end, but will also identify a glimmer of hope for potential environmental litigants. Finally, the Conclusion section will identify questions remaining to be resolved after Lujan

What\u27s Left Standing? FECA Citizen Suits and the Battle for Judicial Review

This Article discusses standing to sue the FEC with two principal objectives. First, it attempts to frame the doctrinal inconsistencies between Lujan and Akins that have given rise to ongoing FECA standing litigation and concludes that the Supreme Court should acknowledge its repudiation of Lujan in cases seeking election-related information. Second, it explores the question whether courts may be statutorily required to consider citizen challenges to FEC enforcement actions as a matter of justiciability theory in the first instance, and concludes that courts should turn to the oft-overlooked Akins decision in lieu of Lujan in reviewing suits brought under citizen-suit statutes generally

What\u27s Left Standing? FECA Citizen Suits and the Battle for Judicial Review

This Article discusses standing to sue the FEC with two principal objectives. First, it attempts to frame the doctrinal inconsistencies between Lujan and Akins that have given rise to ongoing FECA standing litigation and concludes that the Supreme Court should acknowledge its repudiation of Lujan in cases seeking election-related information. Second, it explores the question whether courts may be statutorily required to consider citizen challenges to FEC enforcement actions as a matter of justiciability theory in the first instance, and concludes that courts should turn to the oft-overlooked Akins decision in lieu of Lujan in reviewing suits brought under citizen-suit statutes generally

KamLAND Bounds on Solar Antineutrinos and neutrino transition magnetic moments

We investigate the possibility of detecting solar electron antineutrinos with the KamLAND experiment. These electron antineutrinos are predicted by spin-flavor oscillations at a significant rate even if this mechanism is not the leading solution to the SNP. KamLAND is sensitive to antineutrinos originated from solar ${}^8$B neutrinos. From KamLAND negative results after 145 days of data taking, we obtain model independent limits on the total flux of solar electron antineutrinos $\Phi({}^8 B)< 1.1-3.5\times 10^4 cm^{-2}\ s^{-1}$, more than one order of magnitude smaller than existing limits, and on their appearance probability$P<0.15%$(95antineutrino production by spin-flavor precession, this upper bound implies an upper limit on the product of the intrinsic neutrino magnetic moment and the value of the solar magnetic field$\mu B< 2.3\times 10^{-21}$MeV 95LMA$(\Delta m^2, \tan^2\theta)$values). Limits on neutrino transition moments are also obtained. For realistic values of other astrophysical solar parameters these upper limits would imply that the neutrino magnetic moment is constrained to be, in the most conservative case,$\mu\lsim 3.9\times 10^{-12} \mu_B$(95CL) for a relatively small field$B= 50$kG. For higher values of the magnetic field we obtain:$\mu\lsim 9.0\times 10^{-13} \mu_B$for field$B= 200$kG and$\mu\lsim 2.0\times 10^{-13} \mu_B$for field$B= 1000$ kG at the same statistical significance.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure

Agency Action, Finality and Geographical Nexus: Judicial Review of Agency Compliance With NEPA\u27s Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement Requirement After Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation

In recent years, there has been an increasing recognition of the need to address the complex and interrelated impacts that result from human interaction with the environment. One of the most effective tools for evaluating these impacts has been the preparation of programmatic environmental impact statements (EISs) pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). The status of programmatic EISs, however, has been called into question by the Supreme Court\u27s decision in Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation, which has been interpreted by numerous commentators as heralding the end of programmatic environmental lawsuits. Even more significantly, Lujan has been cited by some courts declining to review federal agency actions with widespread environmental impacts. In Lujan, the Supreme Court held that an environmental advocacy organization lacked standing to challenge the Bureau of Land Management\u27s (BLM) administration of the land withdrawal review program under which the agency determined which federal lands under its administration would be available for mining and other commercial uses. Although several years have passed since the Court decided the case, exactly what type of programmatic lawsuits are ostensibly precluded under Lujan remains unclear

Hamevol1.0: a C++ code for differential equations based on Runge-Kutta algorithm. An application to matter enhanced neutrino oscillation

We present a C++ implementation of a fifth order semi-implicit Runge-Kutta algorithm for solving Ordinary Differential Equations. This algorithm can be used for studying many different problems and in particular it can be applied for computing the evolution of any system whose Hamiltonian is known. We consider in particular the problem of calculating the neutrino oscillation probabilities in presence of matter interactions. The time performance and the accuracy of this implementation is competitive with respect to the other analytical and numerical techniques used in literature. The algorithm design and the salient features of the code are presented and discussed and some explicit examples of code application are given.Comment: 18 pages, Late

The Neutrino mass matrix after Kamland and SNO salt enhanced results

An updated analysis of all available neutrino oscillation evidence in Solar experiments including the latest SNO ES,CC and NC data (254d live time, NaCL enhanced efficiency) is presented. We obtain, for the fraction of active oscillating neutrinos: sin^2alpha=(\Phi_{NC}-\Phi_{CC})/(\Phi_{SSM}-\Phi_{CC})=0.94^{+0.0.065}_{-0.060} nearly 20\sigma from the pure sterile oscillation case. The fraction of oscillating sterile neutrinos cos^2\alpha \lsim 0.12 (1 sigma CL). At face value, these results might slightly favour the existence of a small sterile oscillating sector. In the framework of two active neutrino oscillations we determine individual neutrino mixing parameters and their errors we obtain Delta m^2= 7.01\pm 0.08 \times 10^{-5} eV^2, tan^2 theta=0.42^{+0.12}_{-0.07}. The main difference with previous analysis is a better resolution in parameter space. In particular the secondary region at larger mass differences (LMAII) is now excluded at 95% CL. The combined analysis of solar and Kamland data concludes that maximal mixing is not favoured at 4-5 sigma. This is not supported by the antineutrino reactor results alone. We estimate the individual elements of the two neutrino mass matrix, writing M^2=m^2 I+M_0^2, we obtain (1 sigma errors): M_0^2=10^{-5} eV^2\pmatrix{ 2.06^{+0.29}_{-0.31} & 3.15^{+0.29}_{-0.35} \cr 3.15^{+0.29}_{-0.35} & 4.60^{+0.56}_{-0.44} }