No need to whine about the US Ninth Circuit Court; it's the most overturned court in the country. A couple years ago, they made 27 decisions and 24 of them were reversed on appeal. Decisions from the 9th Circus are no longer taken very seriously. Their decisions sunstantially indicate how laws will NOT be treated in court.

The 9th Circuit is still highly respected in many circles, especially those that have not been swayed by the last 30 years or so of packing the courts with "conservative" judges-really a misnomer, for many of the judges appointed under both Republican and Democrat administrations have taken a regressive view of the law, favoring government and business over individual liberties, and with little regard for the social consequences of their opinions. You don't see lawyers or judges in this country very often striking down the wholesale attacks on our basic civil liberties, such as habeous corpus, let alone being out there in the streets objecting, unlike the lawyers and judges in Pakistan. Shame on us. signed, a lawyer PS once the opinion is published one can have a reasoned discussion of the judges' ruling...

I'm reminded of time of the Trail of Tears when President Jackson used the army to move Indians off their land in the southeast US to Oklahoma. The Indians sued and won in the Supreme Court. Jackson reponded by telling the Court to send their army to stop his army.
The Bush administration has the same attitude toward GHG regulation and CAFE standards (and various other constitutional rights).

The good news here is that this decision lays the foundation for future class action lawsuits, and liability for companies and industries that ignore the warning signs that their products are damaging the climate and the planet.

The Bush administration and their cronies in Congress will seek to shield these industries from liability, in a manner similar to the shield over Blackwater, but ultimately there will be some rationalization of international claims and damages caused by anthropogenic warming. If Libya and Iran can be held liable for terrorism damage claims than perhaps automakers, oil companies, utilities, and even governments have some future legal liability if they do not take action to mitigate the losses caused by their products.

Good Night Tom, How old are you????

You are correct, the court can write all the opinions it wants to, but the Judicial branch can't tell the Executive branch what to do. Not saying they won't try, but this is little more than a political stunt. And All the car companies are the real culprit here.

Joel:

Most of your points are extremely unlikely.

1. This was an appelate review of administrative rulemaking. That is separate branch of law that has little effect on one's right to a private action in tort.

2. Tort claims and class actions are generally questions of state law (even if they end up in federal court because of diversity of residence). A decision concerning some substantive aspect of federal administrative law will have little impact on state laws of tort.

3. Sale of a product that is lawful, that conforms to its specifications, and whose design doesn't carry hidden consumer risks is almost impossible to penalize. Statutes shielding gun manufacturers from claims arising out of crimes committed with their guns have been upheld, even when the gun manufacturers have been skirting much closer to the line -- selling guns which they know appeal to gangsters, and which they know are easy to street-modify in a socially harmful way (i.e. from semi- to full-automatic fire).
Oil probably wouldn't even need statutory protection. It's chemistry has been well understood for decades -- the basics for well over a century -- so the proximate results from burning it are well known and subject to public control. And the customers who buy it and consume it are at least as responsible for releasing GHGs as the companies that supply them.

4. International law/claims/damages are a dead end. To the extent anyone has taken any party to court in this country over terrorism or who knows what else, it has been because a domestic statute has authorized such a claim, and if it is enforced at all, it usually only against property belonging to the miscreant that's located in this country. In the case of Iran, that's not much anymore -- while the country held assets here during the Shah's days, those were liquidated in the eighties after the revolution, and nothing's left. That sort of performance is often just a dubious way to make a point and the media all excited.

Going to court and taking a whole bunch of money away from the oil companies and giving it to -- who exactly? -- will accomplish what goal? Enriching the lawyers? (I'm not against that for personal reasons.) Robbing oil company workers of their retirement pensions? Dissipating the knowledge, capital and expertise of large, effective, well integrated and potentially useful organizations? Getting money to fund environmental initiatives? You could just raise taxes if you wanted the dough for some public purpose like that. Don't talk to me about "punishing wrongdoers." To the extent that sort of medieval nonsense has any place in civil law, it has no meaning in connection to corporations. What's left? Exhume John D. Rockefeller and spit on his corpse because he got us addicted to oil?

Face it: Save for some well-deserved slapping around over their global-warming-denialist funding, oil companies are no more guilty than the rest of us for their core activity of extracting oil from the ground, refining it, and selling it to customers. We've demanded it, we've voted for leaders and lawmakers who've allowed it, encouraged it, and taxed it far too lightly, and we burn it every day.

In many respects, oil dependence, pollution and climate change are political problems that demand solutions that start at the political echelon. And that's actually what this decision is about. The court is demanding that a governmental, regulatory body put on its thinking cap and stop being so stupid. We'll see what happens. My guess is that the Supreme Court may be reluctant to intervene, because they only way they could do so would involve mucking around with established administrative law review standards, which nobody enjoys doing. (Though it was an oil company case, Chevron v. NRDC as I recall, which gave us one of our last major admin uphevals, so who knows...).

NBK, these are all very well articulated and accurate points concerning court jurisdiction, immunity, and the balance of power between the executive and judicial branch. However, sometimes a very small probability of a very large damage award can impact the management, board of directors, and shareholders of a company, and ultimately change its behavior. We have certainly seen this in the Tobacco and Fast food industries.

The key point is that the public policy purpose of tort law is not to redistribute wealth, but to alter the behavior of the parties that have the lowest cost of mitigating the risk. To the extent that the government provides immunity to tort suits, (e.g., terrorism, nuclear powerplants, flood damage, etc.) they short-circuit the economic incentives to make the appropriate economic choices and investments. A carbon tax or cap and trade system can accomplish the same objectives in a more efficient manner, but absent appropriate regulation, the courts have a role to play in providing some accountability for polluters and their protectors with the state.

What you people fail to appreciate is who won and lost.

The plaintiff's lawyers won, they will get their fees paid by the government (your tax-payer dollars at work).

The Plaintiffs did not win. The rule they objected to will not take effect, but that just means the old rules, which they probably liked no better, will remain in effect.

The government's lawyers did not loose. They are civil service, and they will just move on to the next case.

The EPA did not lose, they will have to go back to their cubicles and re-write the rule, but that is what they do for a living anyway.

The automobile industry did not lose, they will not have to comply with a changed rule. Business as usual.

It will take the EPA two years to re-write the rule -- a year for the work and a year to politic the new administration that will be elected a year from now.

Congratulations to everybody involved, you have wasted a tremendous amount of time, paper and money.

All you BDS sufferers can pull your shorts up. It is a meaningless exercise.

Robert posted: "What you people fail to appreciate is who won and lost."

What was won was the abolishment of an artificially low CAFE standard for LD trucks and SUV's. This give room for hope for a more stringent standard that will hopefully greatly reduce the number of these monsters from entering the street. The wind will change in favor of the DEM in the 2008 election, and more stringent environmental laws to come. The EPA will feel the political pressure to re-write their law accordingly. This could be interpreted as a victory for the environmentally-minded people... like uh...GCC!

Whoever posted comments under my name has only confirmed that he is truly unhinged.

Roger: "What was won was the abolishment of an artificially low CAFE standard for LD trucks and SUV's."

No that is not so. The courts judgment suspends the new rules. The old rules, which are very lenient are left in force.

If a Democrat wins next year, she may appoint an EPA administrator who will promulgate rules more to your liking. Be aware, however, that there are many liberal Democrats like Carl Levin who are opposed to CAFE because they are concerned about the jobs of their union member constituents.

Yeap, our current CAFE is pretty pathetic.
We're worse now than we were 30 years ago.

http://greyfalcon.net/cafe.png

==If a Democrat wins next year, she may appoint an EPA administrator who will promulgate rules more to your liking. Be aware, however, that there are many liberal Democrats like Carl Levin who are opposed to CAFE because they are concerned about the jobs of their union member constituents.==

The regs put in by Bush are a joke.