More Mass v. EPA Commentary:

For those who want more commentary on the Supreme Court's decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, I have an op-ed-style commentary about the case on National Review Online.

For those who want still more, SCOTUSBlog is posting commentary and analysis by various folks. Among those up so far are posts by Mark Moller of the Cato Institute and Tim Dowling of Community Rights Counsel. Although my sympathies are with Mark, I lean toward Tim's assessment of the practical implications of the case. CRC has also launched a "warming law" blog here.

UPDATE: Want still more on the case? Here are some worthwhile reads:

• Jalk Balkin at Balkinization;
• Roger Pielke Jr. at Prometheus;
• Justin Pidot at Gristmill;
• Jamison Colburn at Dorf on Law;

Grist's David Roberts has also posted this excerpt about the case from yesterday's White House press briefing.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jonathan Weiner at the UChicago Faculty blog and Roger Alford on Opinio Juris.

Justice Stevens' Scientific Mistake:

As Roger Pielke Jr. points out at Prometheus, there is a scientific error in Justice Stevens' Massachusetts v. EPA opinion:

there is a science error in the majority opinion, though it seems clear that it would not change their judgment of injury. It states:

. . . global sea levels rose somewhere between 10 and 20 centimeters over the 20th century as a result of global warming.

According to the IPCC's Third Assessment Report this value is more like 3 to 5.5 centimeters (from figure 11.10b here) with the rest of the 10 to 20 centimeters total due to natural causes. The Supreme Court has attributed all sea level rise to global warming which is incorrect.

As Pielke goes on to note, this error is not particularly material to the majority's conclusions — it would have found standing even had it relied upon the correct estimates for warming's contribution to sea-level rise — but it is worth noting nonetheless.