Reply Briefs Filed in American Electric Power v. Connecticut Climate Change Lawsuit

By Daniel Firger, Associate Director, Center for Climate Change, Columbia Law School

• On April 11, 2011, petitioners in American Electric Power v. Connecticut, five private investor-owned utility companies, filed their reply brief. On the same day, the Solicitor General filed a separate reply brief on behalf of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), an electric utility owned by the federal government, as respondent supporting petitioners. These reply briefs were submitted just one week before oral argument on Tuesday, April 19, and present few surprises. In two prior posts, we compared the merits brief filed by the petitioners with that of the TVA and analyzed the opposing briefs filed by the respondents, six states, the City of New York and three private land trusts. As teed up in petitioners' and TVA's earlier briefs, the questions to be resolved by the Court [1] have the potential to dramatically reshape not just the nascent legal standards applicable to climate change since Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), but also a wide range of important doctrinal areas such as public nuisance tort law, federal common law, Article III and prudential standing requirements, and the political question doctrine.

Taking into account the arguments advanced by petitioners, respondents, and the U.S. government (in its brief on behalf of the TVA), this post previews a few key issues to look out for. 

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