This story from The Recorder on Law.com notes that law firms are beginning to develop practice groups to specialize on the legal issues related to climate change.
While scientists ponder how quickly the polar ice cap will become a tropical resort -- and California turns the heat up on the auto industry -- law firms are starting to wave their green flags.
Soon after California Attorney General Bill Lockyer announced he was suing carmakers over vehicle pollution, and the state passed a new law to limit greenhouse gas emissions, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman announced it was putting together a new climate change and sustainability practice group. And Morrison & Foerster announced an event to discuss the new Global Warming Solutions Act.
One consequence of this is that the number of professionals with a vested interest in complex and costly climate change policies will increase. Just as many tax lawyers and lobbyists are predisposed to oppose a dramatic simplification of the tax code, in my experience, few practicing environmental lawyers and lobbyists spend much effort trying to significantly simplify environmental regulation -- and this is true even (perhaps especially) if their clients are regulated firms.
Plus, it helps lawyers feel like they're doing good while doing well and pokes GWB in the eye. How perfect is that?
I'm not meaning to bring up the tort reform debate here, or to claim that ATLA attorneys or positions are not principled, or that their opponents are always principled. I am just pointing out that attorneys do sometimes take legislative positions that are contrary to their own interests and in favor of their client's interests, even when no one is noticing.
With due respect to your last sentence.
Lawyers (and law professers) should not be allowed within a thousand miles of making the laws that they are supposed to be using in practicing their unproductive craft.
Defense and Class action lawyers don't create anything, all they do is move things around and in general provide a huge amount of friction into the affairs of the country.
I am not saying that lawyers are not needed, but the importance and brilliance they think they bring to the table is vastly overated.
thedaddy
You should go get a copy of the latest issue of the ABA Journal. It has a rather large article on tort reform in Texas, highlighting how defense lawyers there are all out of business and very unhappy about it.
Yes, defense left ATLA. However, DRI, the defense side equivalent, isn't exactly tort-reform city.
Do you have a citation for this libel, or are you pulling it out of the air?
After all, the environmentalists are proposing Nuremberg-style war crimes trials for climate change deniers.
Thus is the price of ignoring reality.
The citation was right there, in that part of the sentence you elided from your quote:
You can think the cited source is unsatisfying if you like, but it's really not fair to claim that the citation isn't there at all (much less to use this false claim to brand the statement a "libel").
Although I doubt the believers will abandon their faith, I think there are offers of proof against the alleged threat.
There was an unconscious one this morning that made me laugh out loud.
An NPR report said that the Antarctic Ozone Hole this year is the biggest it's ever been. Since I know the conditions required for the hole to form -- it has to be very cold -- I awaited the follow-up.
Sure enough, the reporter blandly announced, late in his summary, that this is the coldest winter in the history of Antarctica. I'm not a lawyer, but if I were, I wouldn't mind going before a jury to crossexamine an expert witness who claimed that the globe is worming and asking, "So, explain to me how global warming resulted in the coldest winter in the history of Antarctica?"
I don't imagine there are a lot of Perry Mason moments in tort law, but that would be one.
All the SUV's driven on Mars have caused Mars to warm up considerably over the past 5 years.
Have you ever noticed how Global Warming Theory is like some kind of unified field theory of the universe or string theory or something, because to the believers NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, its proof of and predicted by Global Warming. If its colder, its predicted by global warming, if its dryer its predicted by global warming, if its wetter its predicted by global warming, more hurricanes yep global warming, no hurricanes the next year yep global warming, Mars heats up yep SUV's on earth driven by big oil execs global warming, end of the ice age yep predicted by global warming theory, increases in teen pregnancy yep global warming making for more love making to avoid thoughts of the heat.
Anonymous Government Lawyer,
I loved your post. Who says liberals are all self-important all knowing elitist snobs??
Florida won't be doing better in its laws until they get rid of all the idiots who were on the Supreme Court in 2000 and enact legislation requiring election of judges to limited terms on the basis of contested, party affiliated ballots. Also, these party affiliated ballot slots for contested judicial races should be part of the straight party ticket vote lever that exists in most states.
Want to make these people get out their ivory towers and end their corrupting self-delusions of greater knowledge and importance, make them run in contested, party affiliated, subject to straight party ticket voting races. Works like a charm in the few states smart enough to have this kind of system.
Says the "Dog"
Contrary to the wailing of some of the commenters here and the implication of your own post that the development of a climate change bar is a BAD thing, isn't it the natural consequence of the success of the fossil fuel producer/user lobby in winning support from the Administration and Republicans to block federal action on climate change?
And isn't it the libertarian position on climate change that the frustration of policy on the federal level (other than widening the spigots on the flow of pork-barrel funding of various pet energy projects) a GOOD thing, so that those who are worried about the economic and ecological damages that result from climate change have to seek solutions through voluntary actions and transactions, the common law doctrines of private and public nuisance, and through actions by states and local communities?
In other words, isn't it precisely the libertarian position that what you seem to be warming of here should be PRAISED - that if a thousand points of climate change action bloom, then that's just the way things should be?
Or do I misunderstand the principled liberatarian position? Perhaps you'd care to share your thoughts on your own position as well, and how it differs from a libertarian one?
Are you in the camp of Sen. Inhofe, who has filed an amicus brief in the action filed by the six NE states against the major Midwestern electric utilities (Connecticut v. AEP) now before the Second Circuit, in which Inhofe insists that climate change policy is "a political question that should be decided by Congress rather than by the courts"?
This is a complex matter, but the growth of the bar in this area is responding to client need, NOT creating demand. The Bush administration itself is responsible for the existence of such demand. While the right (and the industry interests they have backed) may bemoan the political opportunities that this has created for Democrats, they have only themselves to blame (which makes their criticisms of Lockyer etc. rather rich).