Pragmatic Legal and Policy Implications of Environmental Lawmaking


Book Description

The publication of environmental degradation statistics worldwide and the announcement of scientific assessments of the process of its destruction have attracted everyone's attention to the environment. On the world stage, international environmental laws and regulations must be formulated to protect the environment and humanity from further harm. This book provides selective coverage of environmental and energy law within the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom as well as internationally. It is crucial to examine environmental and energy law from a wide range of perspectives and approaches to gain insight into how the law is designed to tackle particular environmental problems arising in both professional and theoretical settings. Pragmatic Legal and Policy Implications of Environmental Lawmaking bridges the knowledge gap between legal developments designed to achieve environmental and/or energy objectives (for example, pollution control and conservation) on the one hand and the practical, scientific, and technical considerations applicable to the same environmental problems on the other. By adopting a multi-disciplinary approach to environmental and energy law, the book embraces all readerships and goes a step further to address the often-difficult problem of improving communication between scientists and engineers and law and policymakers. Covering topics such as environmental degradation, energy law, and international trade legislation, the book will be useful to law students and professionals working in the fields of environmental and/or energy law, engineering and (geo)science students and professionals, as well as others working in various other disciplines.




The Jurisdynamics of Environmental Protection


Book Description

On November 1 and 2, 2002, the University of Minnesota Law School and the University of Minnesota''s Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment, and the Life Sciences sponsored a symposium in honor of Professor Daniel A. Farber's contributions to environmental law. The resulting symposium, The Pragmatic Ecologist: Environmental Protection as a Jurisdynamic Experience, was published in volume 87 of the Minnesota Law Review. The Environmental Law Institute has now combined the proceedings of The Pragmatic Ecologist with additional contributions from many other leading scholars.




Science-Based Lawmaking


Book Description

The Book takes the approach of a critique of the prevailing international environmental law-making processes and their systemic shortcomings. It aims to partly redesign the current international environmental law-making system in order to promote further legislation and more effectively protect the natural environment and public health. Through case studies and doctrinal analyses, an array of initial questions guides the reader through a variety of factors influencing the development of International Environmental Law. After a historical analysis, commencing from the Platonic philosophy up to present, the Book holds that some of the most decisive factors that could create an optimized law-making framework include, among others: progressive voting processes, science-based secondary international environmental legislation, new procedural rules, that enhance the participation in the law-making process by both experts and the public and also review the implementation, compliance and validity of the science-base of the laws. The international community should develop new law-making procedures that include expert opinion. Current scientific uncertainties can be resolved either by policy choices or by referring to the so-called „sound science.“ In formulating a new framework for environmental lawmaking processes, it is essential to re-shape the rules of procedure, so that experts have greater participation in those, in order to improve the quality of International Environmental Law faster than the traditional processes that mainly embrace political priorities generated by the States. Science serves as one of the main tools that will create the next generation of International Environmental Law and help the world transition to a smart, inclusive, sustainable future.




Environmental Law from the Policy Perspective


Book Description

Most books on environment law focus on the law first, and then look at how environmental problems are dealt with in relation to the law. Taking a fresh approach, Environmental Law from the Policy Perspective: Understanding How Legal Frameworks Influence Environmental Problem Solving examines environmental problems first, followed by an examination




The Making of Environmental Law


Book Description

An updated and passionate second edition of a foundational book. How did environmental law first emerge in the United States? Why has it evolved in the ways that it has? And what are the unique challenges inherent to environmental lawmaking in general and in the United States in particular? Since its first edition, The Making of Environmental Law has been foundational to our understanding of these questions. For the second edition, Richard J. Lazarus returns to his landmark book and takes stock of developments over the last two decades. Drawing on many years of experience on the frontlines of legal and policy battles, Lazarus provides a theoretical overview of the challenges that environmental protection poses for lawmaking, related to both the distinctive features of US lawmaking institutions and the spatial and temporal dimensions of ecological change. The book explains why environmental law emerged in the manner and form that it did in the 1970s and traces how it developed over sequent decades through key laws and controversies. New chapters, composing more than half of the second edition, examine a host of recent developments. These include how Congress dropped out of environmental lawmaking in the early twenty-first century; the shifting role of the judiciary; long-overdue efforts to provide environmental justice to disadvantaged communities; and the destabilization of environmental law that has resulted from the election of Presidents with dramatically clashing environmental policies. As the nation’s partisan divide has grown deeper and the challenge of climate change has dramatically raised the perceived stakes for opposing interests, environmental law is facing its greatest challenges yet. This book is essential reading for understanding where we have been and what challenges and opportunities lie ahead.




Law and the Environment


Book Description

Law and the Environment: A Multi-disciplinary Reader brings together for the first time some of the most important original work on environmental policy by scientists, ecologists, philosophers, historians, economists, and legal scholars. Each of the book's four parts provides a different focus on the nature and scope of environmental problems and attempts to use public policy to address these concerns. Part I examines how ecology, economics, and ethics analyze environmental problems and why they support collective action to respond to them. Part II examines the history and present state of environmental law, from early attempts to engage the government to the current debate over the effectiveness of environmental policy. Part III explores the process by which environmental law gets translated into regulatory policy. Part IV considers the future of environmental law at a time when international environmental concerns have become a major force in global diplomacy and international trade agreements.In drawing together a wide variety of perspectives on these issues, Robert V. Percival and Dorothy C. Alevizatos offer a comprehensive examination of how society has responded to the difficult challenges posed by environmental problems. The selections provide a rich introduction to the complexities of environmental policy disputes. Author note: Robert V. Percival is Professor of Law, Robert Stanton Scholar and Director of the Environmental Law Program of the University of Maryland School of Law. He is the principal author of Environmental Regulation: Law, Science, and Policy, and numerous articles on law and the environment. >P>Dorothy C. Alevizatos is an environmental lawyer with a Baltimore law firm. She has an M.S. in conservation biology from the University of Maryland.




Environmental Law and Policy


Book Description

Environmental Law & Policy: Nature, Law & Society is a coursebook designed to access the law of environmental protection through a “taxonomic” approach, exploring the range of legal structures and legal methodologies of the field—rather than simply designing it according to air, water, toxics, etc. as subject media (which often results in duplicative legal coverage). All the major subject areas of pollution and resource conservation are covered, but they are covered according to the legal approaches they represent. The book is “Saxist,” because it originally arose and continues to carry on themes from the teaching, guidance, and writings of the late Joseph Sax, the eminent pioneer of the environment law field who emphasized the interaction between common law and public law statutory structures, and introduced the public trust doctrine as a thread undergirding and running through the entire field of environmental law. Key Features: Includes teaching analysis of the completely-revised Toxics Substances Control Act by co-author Robert Graham, Esq. of Jenner & Block who is advising corporate clients on the new law. Coverage of the Dec 2015 Paris COP-21 climate agreement in its several different aspects, incorporating analysis by coauthor Prof David Wirth who played an active role in international preparations for the Paris accord. Expanded material on carbon pricing, until recently widely thought to be a politically impossible alternative avenue for mitigation of global climate disruption. Tracking major recent revisions in toxic substance regulation, with essential comparisons to the current European model of market access chemical regulation. An updated guide through the complexities of tensions between private property rights and environmental protections, and an innovative clarification of recent Supreme Court caselaw. An innovative chapter on official “planning”— a basic and problematic element of environmental governance, whether at the local level or national public lands level. The purchase of this Kindle edition does not entitle you to receive 1-year FREE digital access to the corresponding Examples & Explanations in your course area. In order to receive access to the hypothetical questions complemented by detailed explanations found in the Examples & Explanations, you will need to purchase a new print casebook.




The Impact of Environmental Law


Book Description

This cutting-edge book invites readers to rethink environmental law and its critical role in ensuring a sustainable future for all. Illustrating narratives of successful developments in environmental law, contributors draw out key lessons and practices for effective reform and highlight opportunities by which we can respond to environmental challenges facing the planet.




Law in Environmental Decision-making


Book Description

This collection of essays adopts a distinctive approach to environmental legal issues. The contributors represent a variety of specialisations, ranging from public law to international law and international relations. Some essays are written from within a UK domestic law perspective, butothers adopt a broadly comparative, supra-national or international approach.The contributors do not assume that problems and solutions in 'environmental law' should be perceived as wholly distinct from the preoccupations of existing legal specialisms. New and proposed legal responses inevitably build on or employ established legal techniques, rather than startingcompletely afresh. The contributors do however, regard environmental problems as posing or at least illuminating significant challenges to received patterns of legal thought. In the light of this, the contributors therefore investigate aspects of law's influnce in environmental decision-making, andconsider whether legal institutions and forms of thought can respond adequately to the challenge of environmental change.




The Common Law and the Environment


Book Description

Since 1970, when the Clean Air Act was passed and the Environmental Protection Agency was created, the primary means for addressing environmental problems in the U.S. has been through comprehensive federal statutes and detailed regulations. Evaluating almost three decades of experience with the Clean Air Act, Superfund, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other major federal environmental statutes, the contributors to this volume question the effectiveness and impact of the legal regime that created these regulations. While most studies of environmental policy paint a picture of improvement through government initiatives, these essays argue the contrary. Pointing to Cleveland's burning river, the death of Lake Erie, smog in Los Angeles, and Love Canal, the contributors demonstrate that command-and-control regulation of the environment has not delivered the great improvements in environmental quality as promised. The Common Law and the Environment offers principles for a new approach to protecting the environment and looks to evidence of the successes of alternative legal systems to address significant problems.