An article by Richard Revesz, New York University School of Law Dean, that appeared in the Harvard Law Review in 2001 has been selected as one of the best environmental and land use law articles of that year by the Land Use and Environment Law Review.
The article, entitled "Federalism and Environmental Regulation: A Public Choice Analysis," was among 10 articles chosen from more than four hundred by a review board of law professors and practicing attorneys expert in land use and/or environmental law. The article will be included the September 2003 issue of Land Use and Environment Law Review.
In a congratulatory letter to Revesz, co-editors A. Dan Tarlock and David Callies wrote: "the article was evaluated by many experts, and compared with other high-quality articles. The collective judgment of this process is that your article is one of the best articles published within the last year."
The article challenges the influential claim that primary responsibility for environmental regulation should be assigned to the federal government because public choice pathologies cause systematic underrepresentation of environmental interests at the state level. Revesz musters empirical data to challenge the view that states are ineffective regulators. He shows that before the era of extensive federal involvement states had in fact made great strides with respect to those air pollution problems that were reasonably well understood. Moreover, states are undertaking significant environmental protection measures that go well beyond what the federal government requires. The article also attempts to explain why some states have taken the lead with respect to protective environmental measures, while the efforts of other states have lagged.