Constitutional Preemption of State Laws Against Massive Oil Spills

Oil spills, the Supreme Court has declared, are "an insidious form of pollution of vast concern to every coastal city or port and to all the estuaries on which life of the ocean and the lives of the coastal people are greatly dependent." In light of this declaration, the purposes of this article are to assess the validity of the federal court's decision preempting Washington's Tanker Pollution Law, and to comment generally on whether, consistent with the evolved preemption doctrine, coastal states can protect themselves from deleterious oil spills by enacting preventive rather than deterrent measures.