This is CBS I in the world. I'm John Badgler, Sacket versus Environmental Protection Agency.

There is Sacket 1, there is Sacket 2, and to choose between them and to understand why

this was argued before the Supreme Court in 2022 and we can expect a decision at best

in 2023 despite the fact that it's been for most of the century a doubt. I welcome Professor

Richard Epstein of the Hoover Institution writing and defining ideas he teaches law at NYU

in the University of Chicago. Richard reading this very carefully as an amateur, I'm struck

by how similar it is to what Dickens made of the chance to record once upon a time in

the 19th century. Once you enter into this tangle of courts and appeals and lengthy discussion

with Amick I Curie filed by distinguished bodies around the country. You are before the court

forever. You are at the court's mercy. This is now 15 years and counting to decide something

that looks commensensically straightforward. We've discussed this before. The Sackets

have a piece of land in Idaho. They want to build a house. It is nearby, priestly, nearby.

I'm using that word in distinctly because there are critical terms here. At some point the

Army Corps of Engineers and other voices observed that the Sackets may be likely in violation of

the EPA's Clean Water Act, may be likely. However, all of this turns on the definition of a few

commonplace words that now are in play, even in 2022, 2023. The word wetlands, what is wetlands?

The word navigable, what does that mean? And the word adjacent. Good evening to you, professor.

Good. It's nice to be here. Yes, there's a lot of open questions about this case.

It is not atypical to see cases that involve land use disputes drag on for well over a decade

because virtually everything that is done by a higher court then goes back to an administrative

agency. There are no rules that are explicitly involved. And so what they do is they require

lower courts and administrators to give intensive, fact specific inquiries about a particular set

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