Disciplined by industrial clock time, modern life distances people from nature's biorhythms such as its ecological, evolutionary, and climatic processes. The law is complicit in numerous ways. It compresses time through 'fast-track' legislation and accelerated resource exploitation. It suffers from temporal inertia, such as 'grandfathering' existing activities that limits the law's responsiveness to changing circumstances. Insouciance about past ecological damage, and neglect of its restoration, are equally serious temporal flaws: we cannot live sustainably while Earth remains degraded and unrepaired. Applying international and interdisciplinary perspectives on these issues, Time and Environmental Law explores how to align law with the ecological 'timescape' and enable humankind to 'tell nature's time'. Lending insight into environmental behaviour and impacts, this book pioneers a new understanding of environmental law for all societies, and makes recommendations for its reform. Minding nature, not the clock, requires regenerating Earth, adapting to its changes, and living more slowly.

The past twenty-five years have seen a significant evolution in environmental policy, with new environmental legislation and substantive amendments to earlier laws, significant advances in environmental science, and changes in the treatment of science (and scientific uncertainty) by the courts. This book offers a detailed discussion of the important issues in environmental law, policy, and economics, tracing their development over the past few decades through an examination of environmental law cases and commentaries by leading scholars. The authors focus on pollution, addressing both pollution control and prevention, but also emphasize the evaluation, design, and use of the law to stimulate technical change and industrial transformation, arguing that there is a need to address broader issues of sustainable development. Environmental Law, Policy, and Economics,which grew out of courses taught by the authors at MIT, treats the traditional topics covered in most classes in environmental law and policy, including common law and administrative law concepts and the primary federal legislation. But it goes beyond these to address topics not often found in a single volume: the information-based obligations of industry, enforcement of environmental law, market-based and voluntary alternatives to traditional regulation, risk assessment, environmental economics, and technological innovation and diffusion. Countering arguments found in other texts that government should play a reduced role in environmental protection, this book argues that clear, stringent legal requirements--coupled with flexible means for meeting them--and meaningful stakeholder participation are necessary for bringing about environmental improvements and technologicial transformations.

Through the lens of time, the book critiques environmental law and recommends ways to enable it to respond to nature's time scales.

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.

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.

Written by two internationally respected authors, this unique primer distills the environmental law and policy of the United States into a practical guide for a nonlegal audience, as well as for lawyers trained in other regions. The first part of the book explains the basics of the American legal system: key actors, types of laws, and overarching legal strategies for environmental management. The second part delves into specific environmental issues (pollution, ecosystem management, and climate change) and how American law addresses each. Chapters include summaries of key concepts, discussion questions, and a glossary of terms, as well as informative "spotlights"—brief overviews of topics. With a highly accessible structure and useful illustrative features, A Guide to U.S. Environmental Law is a long-overdue synthetic reference on environmental law for students and for those who work in environmental policy or environmental science. Pairing this book with its companion, A Guide to EU Environmental Law, allows for a comparative look at how two of the most important jurisdictions in the world deal with key environmental problems.

Anthropocene is the proposed name for the new geological epoch in which humans have overwhelming impact on planetary processes. This edited volume invites reflection on the meaning and role of law in light of changing planetary realties. Taking the concept of the Anthropocene as a starting point, the contributions to this book address emerging legal issues from a transnational environmental law perspective. How law interacts with, and how law governs, global environmental problems is a challenge that legal scholars have approached with vigour over the last decade. More recently, the concept of the Anthropocene has become a topic that researchers have also begun to grapple with by engaging with disciplines beyond legal scholarship. One avenue of research that has emerged to address global environmental problems is transnational environmental law. Adopting ‘transnational law’ as a lens or framework through which to analyse environmental law takes a broader approach to the ways in which law may be assessed and deployed to meet planetary challenges. The chapters within this book provide a timely intervention into the theoretical and practical approaches of transnational environmental law in a time of significant uncertainty and environmental and human crises. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Transnational Legal Theory.

Written by leading scholars and experts with extensive practice and teaching experience in the field, Comparative and Global Environmental Law and Policy offers a student-friendly approach to the study of a rapidly evolving and important area of law. Its multi-jurisdictional selection of judicial opinions and legal materials introduces students to the worldwide reach of environmental law. Through its substance, the book familiarizes students not only with governing and emerging legal principles but also demonstrates how legal norms are applied to specific issues and contexts, illustrating how law-on-the-books becomes law-in-action. Student understanding is reinforced by problem exercises and discussion questions. Professors and students will benefit from: A multi-jurisdictional selection of environmental law cases and regulatory materials from across the world, with many cases from the developing world and emerging economies. Separate chapters on rapidly evolving and critical topics such as rights of nature, sustainability, corporations and private environmental governance, human rights and the environment, and climate change. Presentation of basic background principles of environmental law, institutions, and governance and their operation in international, national and subnational systems, including indigenous governance systems. Emphasis across the book on issues of institutions and governance as well as enforcement and effectiveness. Judicial opinions providing an authoritative articulation of how legal principles are applied in various systems. Numerous problem exercises and discussion questions to introduce topics and reinforce concepts and materials. Integrated perspective on the relationship of international and transnational environmental law, national environmental law, environmental norms and principles in other settings such as in private environmental governance, and governance institutions.