EPA global warming gases regulation ruling [DC Circuit] News
EPA global warming gases regulation ruling [DC Circuit]

Commonwealth of Massachusetts, et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], et al., United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, July 15, 2005 [ruling that the EPA was correct in denying a nonprofit group's petition have it to regulate industrial gases and automobile emission pollutants that contribute to global warming]. Excerpt:

A "determination of endangerment to public health," the court said in Ethyl, "is necessarily a question of policy that is to be based on an assessment of risks and that should not be bound by either the procedural or the substantive rigor proper for questions of fact." Ethyl, 541 F.2d at 24. And as we have held, a reviewing court "will uphold agency conclusions based on policy judgments" "when an agency must resolve issues 'on the frontiers of scientific knowledge.'" Envtl. Def. Fund v. EPA, 598 F.2d 62, 82 (D.C. Cir. 1978).

Read the full text of the opinion here [PDF]. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

THIS DAY @ LAW

First US life insurance company incorporated

On January 11, 1759, America's first life insurance company was incorporated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Corporation for Relief of Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Presbyterian Ministers was established by Presbyterians to support the families of their ministers. In 1988, the company's name was changed to the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund. The company later became Covenant Life Insurance Company before being acquired by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company in 2002. Read a history of the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund from the Pennsylvania Historical Society.

Treaty ended Anglo-American claims, courts in China

On January 11, 1943, the United States and Great Britain relinquished by treaty their extraterritorial claims in China. This abandonment effectively ended the jurisdiction of the extraterritorial United States Court for China (established 1906) and the British Supreme Court in China. Read more about the United States Court for China, which one scholar has called "probably the strangest federal tribunal ever constituted by Congress," in a short online history of the US Ninth Circuit.