In the News

Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity, said the early lawsuit and comments received during the EPA’s public comment period will ensure the final rule is legally sound.

“I don’t think it’s even debatable or a close question that he is not circumventing Congress or abusing executive authority,” says Richard Revesz, a professor and dean emeritus at the New York University School of Law. He testified last month on Capitol Hill about Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which would limit carbon emissions from existing power plants. “Not only is the president not acting inconsistently with the will of Congress, he’s doing something he was mandated to do under existing law.”

The fate of 11,000 American lives each year may hinge on whether the Supreme Court Justices understand that fractions can’t be calculated without knowing the denominator.

But even if his claims don’t help Peabody in federal court, they are undoubtedly useful in the court of public opinion, where sentiment can be swayed by legal arguments, however weak, from a scholar of Professor Tribe’s reputation.

“This is one of the most significant environmental rules in our history,” says Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. “However you look at it, there are going to be winners and losers.”

One of the most prominent defenders of the administration’s position is Richard Revesz, the director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University law school.

Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe and New York University Law professor Richard Revesz traded rhetorical blows over the legality of the U.S. EPA’s proposed carbon dioxide rule before a congressional panel on March 17.

When there are two conflicting amendments, Revesz said statutes trump U.S. code unless the code itself was adopted as legislation, which didn’t happen in this case. Revesz said it’s up to the EPA to then interpret the rule.

Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, told the subcommittee that the EPA’s proposal falls squarely within its Clean Air Act authority, citing three U.S. Supreme Court decisions upholding the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the act. “The Supreme Court has not stood in the way of this kind of regulation,” he said.

In an amicus brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Jan. 30, the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University of Law argues that ever since the current version of Section 111(d) was enacted in the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, Republican and Democratic administrations have interpreted a so-called Section 112 exclusion in a way that is consistent with the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide.