Dismissal of the Certiorari Petition in Pacific Rivers Council: A Bullet Dodged in the Supreme Court's War Against Public Challenges to Flawed Federal Land Use Planning
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2014
Abstract
This article looks at how recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions insulating agency decision making from legal challenges and expanding the deference given to agency interpretations of their statutory and regulatory authority have made it harder for the public to dispute, let alone overturn, agency planning decisions like those made in U.S. Forest Service land and resource management plans. The recent grant of certiorari in U.S. Forest Service v. Pacific Rivers Council, although subsequently dismissed by the Court, suggests that the Court would *227 like to go further in protecting the federal land management planning process from judicial review. This article uses the original grant in Pacific Rivers Council as a springboard to examine the Court's view of the federal resource planning process and citizen involvement in it.
Publication Citation
32 Va. Envtl. L.J. 226-258 (2014)
Scholarly Commons Citation
Babcock, Hope M., "Dismissal of the Certiorari Petition in Pacific Rivers Council: A Bullet Dodged in the Supreme Court's War Against Public Challenges to Flawed Federal Land Use Planning" (2014). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 1646.
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/1646