-
The Making of Environmental Law (review)
- Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 49, Number 2, Spring 2006
- pp. 286-293
- 10.1353/pbm.2006.0023
- Review
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Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 49.2 (2006) 286-293
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The Making of Environmental Law
G. Gordon Davis
E-mail: ggordondavis@yahoo.com.
U.S. environmental law as presently understood is only about 35 years old. It arrived after a relatively short gestation period, compared to most far-reaching public policy. American lawyers who came of age in the 1970s witnessed with its birth an unprecedented change in the legal relationships between humankind and the natural environment. Things moved so far and so fast in the United States that in only a decade, previously unremarkable and routine behavior came to be recognized as antisocial, morally wrong, and even criminal when interpreted in the light of the new laws and rapidly evolving public awareness.
And so it was that after a paroxysm of lawsuits interpreting the National Environmental Policy Act (signed into law on January 1, 1970), it quickly became unthinkable for a federal official to place the environment at risk without first completing an environmental impact assessment. Rules to protect human health from smokestack emissions, and the health of water bodies from discharges of industrial wastewater, imposed under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of 1970 and 1972, respectively, impacted traditional common law property rights by radically constraining previously lawful land uses. Federal laws circumscribing the use of certain kinds of poisons, restricting noise, prescribing rules for the [End Page 286] management of coastal zone areas and federal lands, controlling toxic substances, protecting endangered species, and launching a number of other important initiatives were all enacted in the 1970s, and these initiatives similarly constrained previously acceptable behaviors. Most state legislatures were also active during this period, and environmental laws proliferated at every level of government.
The Making of Environmental Law by Richard J. Lazarus of Georgetown University Law School is a rich history and analysis of these developments. Lazarus examines the sources, reach, strengths, and limitations of environmental law, and the players that have shaped it, within a historical context. He opens with a highly readable discussion of the complexities of environmental problems and the challenges they pose to lawmakers. He then explores the factors that set the stage for the 1970s outpouring of environmental legislation, describes the legislation itself, and comments on the politics and the key individuals. His treatment of the early Nixon administration (surprisingly, halcyon days for environmentalists), the temporizing by Ford and Carter, the dark days under Reagan, the resurgence of environmentalism with Bush (41) and Clinton, and the renewed attack on environmental principles by Bush (43), may be the most valuable contribution of this thoroughly readable and informative book. Finally, Lazarus traces the evolution of environmental protection laws and offers some brief thoughts as to future directions.
What kicked off the environmental revolution? Lazarus recites the often-told tales of how Rachael Carson's Silent Spring, the Santa Barbara oil spill, and the fire on the Cuyahoga River elevated environmental consciousness during the late 1960s. These events certainly furnished the inspiration for the popular environmental awakening. But his linking of the environmental movement to the student movement of the '60s and the anti-Vietnam War activism of the early '70s offers important insights into how and why the awakening so quickly led to transformational events. And his treatment of the now legendary Conference on Law and the Environment, held in September 1969 at Airlie House in Warrenton, West Virginia, is an eloquent testimonial to the effectiveness of a handful of committed individuals in shaping the U.S. environmental law revolution.
In attendance at Airlie House were virtually all of the law professors who constituted the early movement's most prominent academicians and who went on to provide intellectual support and succor to the movement. Nearly all of the early environmental litigators were there. Others in attendance went on to found the Environmental Law Institute, the Environmental Defense Fund, the...