Faculty in the News

Colorado River states cheered this month when President Trump signed swiftly passed legislation ratifying a drought plan for the waterway. But they could be in for a legal fight. . . Some question whether the DCP should have qualified for another review under NEPA, or at least a supplemental assessment. "It is almost certainly true that the 2007 EIS is not adequate to flesh out the current impacts and alternatives for addressing the Colorado River drought," said Mark Squillace, of the University of Colorado Law School.

Podcast: Water has always been scarce in the West, but climate change and steady population growth require us to come up with more innovative ways to conserve water. In this week’s Brainwaves podcast, we talk to CU Boulder Senior Research Associate Douglas Kenney, who says the hard truth is, “we have to use less water.” We also look at "toilet to tap" initiatives; how the water that enters Vegas stays in Vegas; and what the science says about our water future.

Guest commentary: On April 16, 2019, Governor Jared Polis signed into law SB19-181, a bill that reforms oil and gas regulation in Colorado in several important ways. It’s a remarkable achievement for House Speaker KC Becker and other supporters who bent but did not break in the face of strong opposition from the oil and gas industry. And it is notable too because it comes on the heels of the defeat of Proposition 112, which would have required that any new oil and natural gas development be located at least 2,500 feet from any occupied structures or other “vulnerable” areas. This last phrase might well explain the Proposition’s defeat, since vulnerable areas were defined broadly to include such ubiquitous land features as irrigation canals and intermittent streams. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC or Commission) estimated that 85% of the non-federal land subject to the law would have been off-limits to development if Prop 112 had passed.

An oped by Margot Kaminski and Andrew D. Selbst: In the wake of recent revelations about biased algorithms, congressional Democrats have proposed a bill that would require large companies to determine whether the algorithms they’re using result in discrimination, and work to correct them if they do.

The bill, called the Algorithmic Accountability Act and introduced last month by Senator Ron Wyden, Senator Cory Booker and Representative Yvette D. Clarke, is a good start, but it may not be robust enough to hold tech companies accountable.

New strict abortion laws in states like Alabama and Georgia are setting the stage for a legal fight that could make its way to the Supreme Court, sparking fears that the court’s conservative majority could reverse Roe v. Wade. Legal experts have previously cast doubt on the possibility of the Supreme Court revisiting the landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade anytime soon. But Justice Stephen Breyer appeared to raise the possibility this week in an opinion opposing conservative justices’ reversal of an unrelated 1979 ruling . . .“I just have to say that strikes me as very far-fetched,” Robert Nagel, a law professor at the University of Colorado. He said the unrelated 1979 ruling about state sovereignty “does not implicate any of the larger sort of atmospheric or political and institutional considerations that the abortion controversy does,” and therefore doesn’t have the same kind of impact that the reversal of an abortion rights precedent would.

A long line of legal experts say the American Law Institute proposal would make an already huge problem dramatically worse. . . Blake Reid, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School agreed. In an email, he said the updated language would allow companies to force fine-print contracts upon consumers without even giving them a chance to accept or decline them.

"This is an effort to further bind people to all the fine print that no one reads, which in turn means that any company you deal with can basically set the terms for your interaction and you may not be able to say anything about it," Reid said.

The Supreme Court said Tuesday it won’t hear a challenge to a Pennsylvania school system’s transgender bathroom policy, leaving in place rules that allow some transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms of their preference. . . Scott Skinner-Thompson, a law professor at the University of Colorado, said the court’s move on Tuesday is consistent with federalism by deferring to a local school district policy rather than creating a national law.

“Both cases ultimately illustrate the court doesn’t want to get involved too quickly,” he said. “It wanted to give lower courts the first bite at the apple.”

Podcast: Consent is a concept at the center of criminal law and sexual assault. So, why is it so difficult to accurately define? Sexual assault laws have evolved from requiring the victim to resist toward requiring consent. However, "consent" is defined in many ways.

In this episode, two experts on the topic, Criminal Law Professor Aya Gruber and AEquitas Co-Founder and CEO Jennifer Long, discuss and debate the potential for success and failure of implementing an "affirmative consent" requirement, how we now understand that there is no expected behavior during or after a sexual assault, and how important is to treat every case individually.