Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Yale Law Journal
Abstract
Environmental policy in the United States has reached a difficult impasse. Over the past decade, responsibility for setting environmental policy has increasingly shifted from state and local authorities to the federal government. Reacting to the perceived inability of the states to check or reverse environmental degradation, Congress has enacted comprehensive statutes establishing environmental standards and control strategies. The federal government, however, is dependent upon state and local authorities to implement these policies because of the nation's size and geographic diversity, the close interrelation between environmental controls and local land use decisions, and federal officials' limited implementation and enforcement resources. The success of federal programs has been gravely compromised by this dependence upon state and local governments, whose generally poor record in controlling environmental deterioration triggered the initial resort to federal legislation, and whose subsequent performance in the context of federal programs has in many instances remained inadequate." Some of the difficulties besetting federal environmental programs could be alleviated if federal officials were empowered to require or induce local officials to carry them out. Yet recent court decisions - particularly that of the Supreme Court in National League of Cities v. Usery (NLC) -have cast considerable doubt on the constitutional authority of the federal government to require state implementation of federal programs. This article will consider two strategies for federal conscription of state enforcement resources: enactment of direct mandates and imposition of conditions on federal grants. It will examine the constitutional issues presented, together with underlying questions as to the proper allocation of responsibility for environmental policy between state and federal authorities.
First Page
1196
DOI
https://doi.org/10.2307/795705
Volume
86
Publication Date
1977
Recommended Citation
Richard B. Stewart,
Pyramids of Sacrifice? Problems of Federalism in Mandating State Implementation of National Environmental Policy,
86
Yale Law Journal
1196
(1977).
Available at:
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-articles/1125
