The NRDC is having a good month, what with the injunction against the use of sonar by the navy in southern California (it may be bad for whales, and the appropriate environmental impact statement was not prepared, the court concluded), and the enjoining of exploratory drilling by Shell in Alaska (a, shall we say, not yet explored temporary order pending a mid-August hearing). Impact litigation against big institutions still thrives on the west coast.

I’m extraordinarily late to the party, but it’s worth noting. Career attorneys are resigning or publicly protesting the current Department of Justice leadership. The former actually has been happening for a while (and sometimes resignation is a hard-to-disaggregate mixture of annoyance and the temptations of early retirement). But the airing of grievances in newspapers is pretty novel. So, for that matter, is the willingness to cover it.  One of the first of the recent wave to quit was the long serving head of the department’s Office of Information and Privacy, who in this interview describes his supervisors as too young and too ineffective. Here, by the way, is the latest report on information disclosure by DOJ; it is relatively positive.

James Park’s Duke Law Journal article has a vision of the choice for SEC regulators between rules and principles:

“Rulemaking reflects the mentality that securities regulation is a technical enterprise that should be left to experts who have created a comprehensive, efficient, administrative scheme. Principles-based enforcement actions reflect the demand that regulators punish conduct violating principles reflecting public values. For the most part, the regulated prefer a predictable regulatory regime, which rulemaking provides, while the public prefers decisive responses, which can be provided by principles-based enforcement actions.”

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