Jonathan Adler

Jonathan Adler is the Cabell Research Professor and Tazewell Taylor Professor of Law at William & Mary Law School, where his work focuses on administrative law, environmental law and policy, regulatory process, constitutional law, and federalism. He previously founded and directed the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

Federal Environmental Policy Misallocates Local, Interstate, and Climate Problems

Hoover Institution panelists Jonathan Adler and Todd Myers argue that US environmental law often assigns authority to the wrong level of government. Adler makes the case that federal regulation is strongest when states impose costs across borders, but much of the federal environmental code instead standardizes local trade-offs; Myers argues that decentralization works only when it tightens accountability and connects decisions to consequences. Their shared claim is not that states are inherently better than Washington, but that environmental governance should follow the scale of the problem and the distribution of costs and benefits.

Hoover InstitutionJun 8, 202621 min read