Former Yugoslav Nations Punch Far Above Weight at World Cup
Article excerpt
Just 0.2 percent of the world's population. Seven and a half percent of the players who made it to the round of 32. That gap is It of the former Yugoslavia at this World Cup, where the region's outsized soccer legacy keeps showing up decades after the country itself ceased to exist. Of the six successor states, only Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia are still competing, yet the Yugoslav footprint runs far wider than flags suggest. Christian Pulisic, who captained the United States, carries Croatian heritage. The pattern reflects something deeper than luck or random talent clustering: the former Yugoslavia built a coaching infrastructure and club culture in the mid-twentieth century that exported technical, physically aggressive soccer across the continent. Croatia in particular has become a perennial overperformer for a nation of just four million people, having reached the World Cup final in 2018. Bosnia, by contrast, has historically struggled to convert individual talent into tournament runs. Together, though, they keep the old federation's spirit alive on the pitch in a way no political arrangement ever managed to sustain off it.
Lights along the beach can create problems for turtles. Bright lights at night can disorient sea turtle hatchlings and prevent them from crawling into the sea. Sufficient beachfront lighting might even constitute a prohibited "take" of Loggerhead sea turtles and other turtle species listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Assume that the erection or maintenance of beachfront lighting in turtle habitat is a take under Section 9 of the ESA. Could a state or local government's decision to allow such beachfront lighting, either by permitting it or perhaps just failing to prohibit it, also be a take under Section 9? And, if so, could the ESA require a state or local government to take action against private landowners who erect or maintain beachfront lighting when sea turtles are reproducing? Would such a requirement be constitutional? I think not.
USFWS
Holding state and local governments liable under the ESA for licensing, permitting, or failing to control private conduct violates the anti-commandeering principle, or so I argue in my article, "Conservation Commandeering," forthcoming in a Catholic University Law Review symposium. Nonetheless, courts impose this sort of vicarious liability on state and local governments with some frequency, most often in response to citizen suits filed under the ESA by environmental groups. Cases have involved state agency's failing to impose sufficiently stringent limitations on fur trapping or fishing, among other things. In this post I noted a case pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit concerning Florida's alleged failure to adequately regulate septic systems. At the moment, most district courts to have considered such claims have rejected commandeering-based arguments. In my view, they are wrong, and imposing liability in such cases is hard to square with the Court's federalism jurisprudence.
I have just posted a draft of the article on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) prohibits anyone-including state and local governments-from "taking" protected species without a permit. Courts have extended this prohibition to impose vicarious liability on state and local governments, holding that a government's failure to regulate private activities sufficiently harmful to listed species may itself constitute an illegal take. This Article argues that such "conservation commandeering" cannot be reconciled with the Supreme Court's anti-commandeering jurisprudence. Under current doctrine, the federal government may not compel state and local governments to enact or administer regulatory programs implementing federal law, nor may it prohibit states from licensing or authorizing private activity. Requiring states to restrict private conduct as a condition of avoiding ESA liability does precisely what these decisions forbid. This Article further argues that enforcing the anti-commandeering principle need not undermine species conservation. The ESA's cooperative federalism provisions and existing tools for inducing voluntary state participation offer workable alternatives-ones that respect both constitutional structure and the practical importance of state and local cooperation in protecting listed species.
Comments are welcome.
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