California, Climate Change, and the Constitution

In this promising time for greenhouse gas regulation in California, the state faces some critical choices about how to structure its cap-and-trade program. Its decisions will create different political winners and losers and will have distinct implications for the program's efficiency, equity and administrative costs. Among the many factors that California outght to consider are the constitutional implications of combating leakage and extending a trading market into international territory. This report has first illustrated that the fate of California's ability to control leakage will hinge on whether California can take actions without triggering strict scrutiny under the dormant Commerce Clause.