Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) · 2008 · 638 citations · 0 references
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Public AffairsEnvironmental LawEnvironmental PolicyClimate Change LawLawmakingLegislative ProcessClimate ChangeClimate GovernanceClimate LawClimate PoliticsEnvironmental RulemakingLawmaking ProcessClimate Change PolicyClimate Change PoliticsClimate Change RegulationJudicial Institutional DesignLawmaking ProcedureLegislative Budget AmendmentsMandate InterpretationPolicy Change Through Legislation
Climate‑change legislation in the United States risks being eroded over time by amendments, budget constraints, agency rulings, and enforcement gaps, turning ambitious mandates into symbolic statements. The paper argues that long‑term success of climate‑change laws requires institutional design features that protect programmatic implementation from such erosion.
Climate change may soon have its “lawmaking moment” in the United States. The inherent problem with such lawmaking moments, however, is just that: they are moments. What Congress and the President do with much fanfare can quickly and quietly slip away in the ensuing years. This is famously so for environmental law. Subsequent legislative amendments, limited budgets, appropriations riders, interpretive agency rulings, massive delays in rulemaking, and simple nonenforcement are more than capable of converting a seemingly uncompromising legal mandate into nothing more than a symbolic aspirational statement. Climate change legislation is especially vulnerable to being unraveled over time for a variety of reasons, but especially because of the extent to which it imposes costs on the short term for the realization of benefits many decades and sometimes centuries later. To be successful over the long term, climate change legislation will need to include institutional design features that insulate programmatic implementation to a