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Deadlines are a ubiquitous feature of lawmaking in contexts ranging from federal agency rulemakings to international negotiations. Despite the expectation that these deadlines will drive conflicting parties toward agreement or overcome bureaucratic inertia, their impact on decision-making is mixed, often producing only modest improvements in speed, and perhaps sometimes none at all. On the downside, deadlines can sometimes reduce the quality of decisions or encourage brinksmanship when missing a deadline would have draconian consequences. If there is a case for deadlines, then, it is an uneasy one. Game theory suggests some potential ways to increase the effectiveness of deadlines as action-forcing strategies, such as improving information sharing between actors and providing enforcement mechanisms for negotiated outcomes. Keywords: statutory deadlines, regulatory deadlines, lawmaking brinksmanship, negotiation theory

Rather than being keyed to any one legal system, this chapter investigates the constitutional and administrative challenges of climate change at a more general level. It identifies problems that cut across legal systems and suggests some effective approaches to solving them. The chapter first discusses the constitutional problems involved in responding to the risks of climate disasters, including both structural issues such as federalism and potential violations of property rights and other individual rights. It then considers aspects of administrative law relevant to climate disasters, including the need to ensure government transparency and accountability as well as the significance of public participation.