Massachusetts v. EPA: Breaking New Ground on Issues Other Than Global Warming

After the Supreme Court handed down its split 5-4 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, various media outlets trumpeted the significance of the case. As one example, the Chicago Tribune proclaimed: EPA must regulate greenhouse gases. \u27 The problem, of course, is that the Court said no such thing. To be sure, the Court determined that greenhouses gases were air pollutants within the meaning of the Clean Air Act (CAA). But the Court\u27s opinion did not order the EPA to regulate with respect to climate change. Rather, the ruling remands the case to allow the agency to reconsider its denial of a petition to regulate the emissions of four pollutants associated with climate change from mobile sources under section 202 of the CAA. The ruling, in other words, leaves the EPA free to decide not to regulate, so long as it provides adequate justification for its decision. This means that what the media has touted as the global warming case may not actually lead to the regulation of global warming at all under the current CAA. So wherein lies the true significance of the case? We believe that the long-term significance of the case is likely to be the opinion\u27s impact on two doctrinal areas of the law: (1) the standing of states; and (2) the standard of review applied to denials of petitions for rulemaking. First, although we have some questions about the Court\u27s reasoning, we are encouraged to see the beginning of a framework for evaluating state standing based on the interest of the state in the litigation. Second, with respect to judicial review of agency inaction in the rulemaking context, the Court\u27s decision breaks new ground not only by confirming the reviewability of an agency\u27s denial of a rulemaking petition but also by closely scrutinizing the reasons that the EPA offered for its decision to decline to regulate. Note: This Colloquy Essay was part of a Symposium on Ordering State-Federal Relations Through Federal Preemption Doctrine

Heat transfer and Fourier's law in off-equilibrium systems

We study the most suitable procedure to measure the effective temperature in off-equilibrium systems. We analyze the stationary current established between an off-equilibrium system and a thermometer and the necessary conditions for that current to vanish. We find that the thermometer must have a short characteristic time-scale compared to the typical decorrelation time of the glassy system to correctly measure the effective temperature. This general conclusion is confirmed analyzing an ensemble of harmonic oscillators with Monte Carlo dynamics as an illustrative example of a solvable model of a glass. We also find that the current defined allows to extend Fourier's law to the off-equilibrium regime by consistently defining effective transport coefficients. Our results for the oscillator model explain why thermal conductivities between thermalized and frozen degrees of freedom in structural glasses are extremely small.Comment: 7 pages, REVTeX, 4 eps figure

Lessons from the Lost History of \u3ci\u3eSeminole Rock\u3c/i\u3e

This Article informs the current debate over Auer v. Robbins (519 U.S. 452 (1997)) deference by exploring the roots of the Bowles v. Seminole Rock decision (325 U.S. 410 (1945)) and its subsequent reinterpretation through a creative approach. To do so, this Article offers a series of hypothetical opinions applying the various historical interpretations of Seminole Rock to a single set of facts. Part I places Seminole Rock in the constellation of deference doctrines in administrative law so that one can easily understand what the doctrine is and when it applies. Part II examines the transformation of Seminole Rock through a series of hypothetical D.C. Circuit opinions based on the facts of Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center (133 S. Ct. 1326 (2013)). These opinions illustrate how courts have struggled to apply this expansive and untethered doctrine in the face of a growing administrative state. Part III offers observations from this exercise and urges reconsideration of Auer deference to reconcile the current doctrine with Seminole Rock\u27s historical roots

Massachusetts v. EPA: Breaking New Ground on Issues Other Than Global Warming (Part II)

After the Supreme Court handed down its split 5-4 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, various media outlets trumpeted the significance of the case. As one example, the Chicago Tribune proclaimed: EPA must regulate greenhouse gases. \u27 The problem, of course, is that the Court said no such thing. To be sure, the Court determined that greenhouses gases were air pollutants within the meaning of the Clean Air Act (CAA). But the Court\u27s opinion did not order the EPA to regulate with respect to climate change. Rather, the ruling remands the case to allow the agency to reconsider its denial of a petition to regulate the emissions of four pollutants associated with climate change from mobile sources under section 202 of the CAA. The ruling, in other words, leaves the EPA free to decide not to regulate, so long as it provides adequate justification for its decision. This means that what the media has touted as the global warming case may not actually lead to the regulation of global warming at all under the current CAA. So wherein lies the true significance of the case? We believe that the long-term significance of the case is likely to be the opinion\u27s impact on two doctrinal areas of the law: (1) the standing of states; and (2) the standard of review applied to denials of petitions for rulemaking. First, although we have some questions about the Court\u27s reasoning, we are encouraged to see the beginning of a framework for evaluating state standing based on the interest of the state in the litigation. Second, with respect to judicial review of agency inaction in the rulemaking context, the Court\u27s decision breaks new ground not only by confirming the reviewability of an agency\u27s denial of a rulemaking petition but also by closely scrutinizing the reasons that the EPA offered for its decision to decline to regulate. Note: This Colloquy Essay was part of a Symposium on Ordering State-Federal Relations Through Federal Preemption Doctrine

Sensing electric and magnetic fields with Bose-Einstein Condensates

We discuss the application of Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) as sensors for magnetic and electric fields. In an experimental demonstration we have brought one-dimensional BECs close to micro-fabricated wires on an atom chip and thereby reached a sensitivity to potential variations of ~10e-14eV at 3 micron spatial resolution. We demonstrate the versatility of this sensor by measuring a two-dimensional magnetic field map 10 micron above a 100-micron-wide wire. We show how the transverse current-density component inside the wire can be reconstructed from such maps. The field sensitivity in dependence on the spatial resolution is discussed and further improvements utilizing Feshbach resonances are outlined.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure