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Technical innovation is ubiquitous in contemporary society and contributes to its extraordinarily dynamic character. Sometimes these innovations have significant effects on the environment or on human health. They may also stimulate efforts to develop second-order technologies to ameliorate those effects. The development of the automobile and its impact on life in the United States and throughout the world is an example. The story of modern environmental regulation more generally includes chapters filled with examples of similar efforts to respond to an enormous array of technological advances. This Article uses a different lens to consider the role of technological innovation. In particular, it considers how technological advances have the potential to shape governance efforts in the compliance realm. The Article demonstrates that such technological advances—especially new and improved monitoring capacity, advances in information dissemination through e- reporting and other techniques, and improved capacity to analyze information—have significant potential to transform governance efforts to promote compliance. Such transformation is likely to affect not only the \"how\" of compliance promotion, but also the \"who\"—who is involved in promoting compliance. Technological innovation is likely to contribute to new thinking about the roles key actors can and should play in promoting compliance with legal norms. The Article discusses some of the potential benefits of these types of technological innovation in the context of the Environmental Protection Agency's ongoing efforts to improve its compliance efforts by taking advantage of emerging technologies. We also identify some of the pitfalls or challenges that agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency need to be aware of in opening this emerging bundle of new tools and making use of them to address real-world environmental needs.

This Article explores possible insights from the \"procedural justice\" literature about features of government decision making processes that citizens are likely to consider to be particularly valuable or important. Numerous commentators have urged that the government take steps to increase citizen participation in its decision making processes as a way to offset concerns about government legitimacy. The premise of the Article is that incorporating into government decision making processes features that are important to citizens is a potentially helpful step in fostering meaningful citizen participation. Processes that citizens value are more likely to be processes that citizens use and that enhance citizen confidence in government, while processes with features that citizens find unsatisfactory are more likely to be processes that do not engender meaningful citizen input; they may even operate to undermine citizen confidence. This Article reviews a framework that the procedural justice literature proposes for assessing citizen satisfaction with decision making processes, and it applies this framework to an international decision making process that relies heavily on citizen participation, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation's (CEC) citizen submissions process. This process, which empowers citizens to file complaints in which they claim that any of the North American countries is failing to effectively enforce one or more of its environmental laws, was created with the hope that it would increase government accountability and transparency, and inform and thereby improve the exercise of agency discretion. This Article considers the track record of the process in light of the procedural justice literature in an effort to advance thinking about the design of government decision making processes that are intended to promote meaningful public participation.

The NAFTA Environmental Commission's citizen petition process is an important experiment in \"new governance\" because of its emphasis on citizen participation, accountability, and transparency as strategies to enhance government legitimacy and improve government performance. Its focus on promoting compliance and enforcement adds to its importance for those interested in those central aspects of the regulatory process. The procedure has had a rocky start in many respects, although there are signs that in some cases it has had a positive impact. This Article sets forth what we perceive to be the promise of the process, the pitfalls that have undermined its effectiveness to date, and adjustments that would equip it to make a meaningful contribution to North American environmental governance. More generally, the Article provides a framework for evaluating such citizen petition processes and explains how lessons from an analysis of the North American procedure may contribute to assessments of the design and implementation of similar mechanisms in other international and domestic legal regimes. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Professor Markell analyzes how the proposed Superfund Reform Act fails to implement the Administration's \"Reinventing Government\" principles and offers constructive modifications to minimize redundancy, empower personnel, and encourage creativity.

A third is to rely on third-party validation, self-monitoring, and public disclosure of emissions and other data as part of a regulatory or permitting scheme as a means of leveraging government efforts and reducing enforcement-related burdens for federal and state regulators, an important goal in a time of shrinking resources. [...]OECA has launched its Next Gen Compliance initiative to effect such dramatic changes.

The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) is an international institution with a North American focus. The CEC was created by the US, Canada, and Mexico in the environmental side agreement they negotiated to the North American Free Trade Agreement. This side agreement - itself known by the acronym NAAEC - is officially entitled the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation. The NAAEC charges the CEC with a variety of responsibilities. This article reviews one of the more innovative features of the CEC, its citizen submission process.