To Whom Do We Refer When We Speak of Obligations to “Future Generations”? Reproductive Rights and the Intergenerational Community

Sherry F. Colb · September 2009 77 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1582 (2009) Ordinarily, consideration of future generations’ interests takes for granted that there will be future generations to have interests. It is, in other words, wrong to despoil the environment or fail to keep the social security system solvent because our children, grandchildren, and...
Read More

Preemption Hard Look Review, Regulatory Interaction, and the Quest for Stewardship and Intergenerational Equity

William W. Buzbee · September 2009 77 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1521 (2009) Current debates over federalism, especially preemption, center on the merits of legal structures that rely on a sole or preemptive federal regulator versus strategies that retain roles for multiple regulatory actors, especially federal, state, and local actors sharing concurrent and interacting authority....
Read More

Future Generations: A Prioritarian View

Matthew D. Adler · September 2009 77 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1478 (2009) How should we take account of the interests of future generations? This question has great practical relevance. For example, it is front and center in arguments about global warming policy. Unfortunately, the question is doubly difficult—doubly, because it not merely implicates generic...
Read More

Social Security and Intergenerational Justice

Nancy J. Altman · September 2009 77 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1383 (2009) What do generations owe one another? Professor Buchanan subjects to rigorous examination the commonly expressed platitude that we are obligated to future generations. In doing so, he makes a valuable contribution to the literature and thinking about intergenerational equity. In his perceptive...
Read More

Does Intergenerational Justice Require Rising Standards of Living?

Lawrence Zelenak · September 2009 77 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1358 (2009) In his provocative and insightful contribution to this symposium, What Do We Owe Future Generations?, Neil Buchanan takes issue with the conventional wisdom that the United States is harming its future generations by running large and persistent federal budget deficits. He focuses particular...
Read More

What Do We Owe Future Generations?

Neil H. Buchanan · September 2009 77 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1237 (2009) Every decision that we make today can either directly or indirectly affect the interests of future generations, both those generations already born and those to be born in the decades and centuries after we are gone. Even if it is unlikely that...
Read More