This new edition is an excellent tool for teaching students how to analyze environmental issues and become environmental lawyers. It covers the most significant environmental programs, showing how they operate and how both agencies the courts resolve statutory ambiguities. In addition to including a new chapter on international environmental law, the second edition has been updated to include several new developments, including the Supreme Court's decision in Rapanos, the D.C. Circuit's new source review decisions in the two New York cases, and the Eighth Circuit's post-Aviall private-cost-recovery decision in the Atlantic case.

The new edition features an entirely new section on climate change law. It also contains updated sections on all federal environmental laws and more coverage of international environmental laws. It continues to be an excellent tool for analyzing environmental issues and teaching how to be an environmental lawyer.

The unprecedented expansion in environmental regulation over the past thirty years—at all levels of government—signifies a transformation of our nation's laws that is both palpable and encouraging. Environmental laws now affect almost everything we do, from the cars we drive and the places we live to the air we breathe and the water we drink. But while enormous strides have been made since the 1970s, gaps in the coverage, implementation, and enforcement of the existing laws still leave much work to be done. In The Making of Environmental Law, Richard J. Lazarus offers a new interpretation of the past three decades of this area of the law, examining the legal, political, cultural, and scientific factors that have shaped—and sometimes hindered—the creation of pollution controls and natural resource management laws. He argues that in the future, environmental law must forge a more nuanced understanding of the uncertainties and trade-offs, as well as the better-organized political opposition that currently dominates the federal government. Lazarus is especially well equipped to tell this story, given his active involvement in many of the most significant moments in the history of environmental law as a litigator for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, an assistant to the Solicitor General, and a member of advisory boards of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Environmental Defense Fund. Ranging widely in his analysis, Lazarus not only explains why modern environmental law emerged when it did and how it has evolved, but also points to the ambiguities in our current situation. As the field of environmental law "grays" with middle age, Lazarus's discussions of its history, the lessons learned from past legal reforms, and the challenges facing future lawmakers are both timely and invigorating.

Publisher Description

The new edition features a new introduction to environmental law, and the ways that environmental regulation is implemented. It also contains updated sections on the major federal environmental laws, including the NEPA amendments of 2023. It continues to be an excellent tool for analyzing environmental issues and teaching how to be an environmental lawyer.

This insightful book explores why implementation of environmental law is too often ineffective in achieving effective environmental governance. It provides careful analysis and innovative proposals to help improve the practical effectiveness of legal i

Amid all the laws and regulations on environmental protection and worker safety, what is the responsible business or landowner to do? What should the responsible consultant advise? Environmental Law and Enforcement provides you with a practical guide that takes the mystery out of environmental law and related land use controls. The author provides a synopsis of major environmental topics from A to Z and features citations to the major federal statutes in the United States Code (USC) and the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) so you can easily find governing statutes and regulations. Special sections discuss the use of experts in case preparation and how to be an effective case witness. A checklist for compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act is included. The book covers strategies to cope with landowner liability for hazardous waste, consultant liability for mistakes in hazardous waste site assessments, and guidelines for emergency managers to minimize legal liability. The section on insurance liability provides practical approaches to dealing with insurance companies on hazardous waste claims. The successful organization will manage for environmental protection as a corporate goal, and consequently stays ahead of new government requirements-away from lawyers and lawsuits-and ahead of the competition. Environmental Law and Enforcement gives you the tools you need to achieve this mission.

The right to a healthy environment has been the subject of extensive philosophical debates that revolve around the question: Should rights to clean air, water, and soil be entrenched in law? David Boyd answers this by moving beyond theoretical debates to measure the practical effects of enshrining the right in constitutions. His pioneering analysis of 193 constitutions and the laws and court decisions of more than 100 nations in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa reveals a positive correlation between constitutional protection and stronger environmental laws, smaller ecological footprints, superior environmental performance, and improved quality of life.

Environmental Law and Policy is a user-friendly, concise, inexpensive treatment of environmental law. Written to be read rather than used as a reference source, the authors provide a broad conceptual overview of environmental law while also explaining the major statutes and cases. The book is intended for four audiences ? students (both graduate and undergraduate) seeking a readable study guide for their environmental law and policy courses; professors who do not use casebooks (relying on their own materials or case studies) but want an integrating text for their courses or want to include conceptual materials on the major legal issues; and practicing lawyers and environmental professionals who want a concise, readable overview of the field. The first part of the book provides an engaging discussion of the major themes and issues that cross-cut environmental law. Starting with the first chapter's brief history of environmentalism in America, the second chapter goes on to explore the importance and implications of basic themes that occur in virtually all environmental conflicts, including scientific uncertainty, market failures, problems of scale, public choice theory, etc. It then presents three dominant perspectives in the field that drive policy development ? environmental rights, utilitarianism, and environmental justice. Chapter Three fills in the remaining legal background for understanding environmental protection, reviewing the theory of instrument choice, the basics of administrative law, core concepts in constitutional law (e.g., takings, the commerce clause), and the doctrines associated with how citizen groups shape environmental law (such as standing). The second part of the book examines the substance of environmental law, with separate sections on each of the major statutes. International issues such as ozone depletion, climate change, and transboundary waste disposal are also addressed. These chapters build on the themes and conceptual framework laid down in the first part of the text in order to integrate the discussion of individual statutes into a broad portrait of the law.