What Do Offshore Wind Farms Have To Do With the Disintegration of Contract Law in Wisconsin?

Answer: They are the subjects of this year’s top student comments in the Marquette Law Review.  The winners of the Gold and Silver Quill Awards were announced at last week’s Law Review banquet.  Marvin Bynum won the Gold for “Testing the Waters: Assessing Wisconsin’s Regulatory Climate for Offshore Wind Projects,” while Donald Stroud won the Silver for “Beyond Deception: Finding Prudential Boundaries between Breach of Contract and Deceptive Trade Practice Act Violations in Wisconsin.”  Both papers are on SSRN; “Testing the Waters” is here, and “Beyond Deception” is here. The abstracts appear after the jump.  Congratulations to Marvin and Tripp for this well-deserved recognition!

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Water and People Conference

2880829064_eae0f10628On Friday, February 26, 2010, Marquette University Law School (MULS) will hold its annual Public Service Conference at the Alumni Memorial Union on the Marquette University campus on the increasingly important topic of water law.  The conference, entitled “Water and People,” will address water issues in Wisconsin (as well as nationally and internationally), development and the environment, regulation, and water ethics.  Statewide leaders from business, government, and non-profit served on a steering committee that worked with Assistant Dean for Public Service, Dan Idzikowski, and myself (I coordinate the MULS water law program) to plan the conference.  Based on the group’s efforts, experts from Wisconsin, around the United States, and from Canada will gather to talk about some of the most important topics in the field of water law.  The conference will also feature a keynote address by Cameron Davis, senior advisor to the United States EPA Administrator for Great Lakes Restoration.  You can learn more about the conference and register for the conference at http://law.marquette.edu/cgi-bin/site.pl?2130&pageID=4303.

While no blog post can truly capture all that this conference will entail, here is a preview of the panels and topics.

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The EPA Power Grab

epa_logoMy thanks to Prof. Slavin for inviting me to serve as student blogger of the month.  I shall do my level best to maintain the high standards set by the MULS Faculty Blog.

Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a finding that greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, constitute a threat to human health and welfare as defined under the Clean Air Act (CAA).  This is significant because the CAA allows the EPA to regulate any pollutant that the EPA finds a danger to human health and welfare.  As EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson stated, “[i]f we don’t act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the planet we will leave to the future will be very different that then one we know today.”  If the EPA does decide to act, the same statement will apply to the U.S. economy.

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