William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review
Abstract
What is the whole: a river or that river and its tributaries? There is no “natural” answer to the question, only so many answers as there are reasons for asking. Lately, the Clean Water Act has been the captive of such diversions in our Supreme Court’s agenda. Changing it will not free it from that captivity. For whatever reforms we choose could still provide boundless opportunities for frustration in questions like the above. If the Court is as eager to cause that frustration as it has appeared lately, maybe we should help the Court to its fight with this iconic statute. Continuity is everywhere in life, but it is fleeting in law. For tribunals trading on the strength and clarity of reasons that have neither strength nor clarity, it is probably even more so. In a race against time like the Chesapeake Bay’s restoration, success may turn on how fast such an agent can be expelled from the fray. And that turns on how quickly more Americans recognize judges who have ceased judging and begun, instead, to dictate.
Repository Citation
Jamison E. Colburn, Fights Over Continuity - In Life and Law, 48 Wm. & Mary Env’t L. & Pol'y Rev. 451 (2024), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmelpr/vol48/iss3/3Included in
Environmental Law Commons, Supreme Court of the United States Commons, Water Law Commons