Environmental Litigation Trends from Region 3 of the USDA Forest Service 1996-2015

• In Event: Lightning Talk: Systemic Issues in Criminal Justice: Changing and Challenging Legal Landscapes

Abstract

Region 3 of the USDA Forest Service, a federal land management agency, is responsible for over 20.6 million acres of land in New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Texas. The litigation division of Region 3 has historically had one of the highest environmental and natural resource caseloads among government agencies. As an intern for the Region, I helped input data on closed cases and analyzed case data between 1996 and 2015. An analysis of closed cases has not been completed before within the agency, to the knowledge of the Region. Closed case data was pulled from a previous case cataloging system used by the Region and from the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) service, a website that provides access to federal court records. Data was converted into a comma-separated values (CSV) file and analyzed in R. This talk will briefly present identified trends in case data such as court decisions in favor of and against the government, laws and policies that are alleged to have been violated; and the type of parties suing or being sued by the Forest Service (e.g., conservation organizations, landholders, mining companies).

Author

• Sarah Marks, Rutgers University