O Canada!: The Story of Rafferty, Oldman, and the Great Whale

In the late twentieth century, environmental policy swept the world, and among its primary instruments were processes for evaluating the adverse impacts of proposed actions. In all countries these processes quickly came into conflict with established bureaucracies, none more powerful and resistant to change than those in charge of water resources development. They also conflicted, in many cases, with established ideas of governance, right down to principles of federalism, judicial review, and the separation of powers. So it was in Canada, where in the late l980s three water resources development schemes, each one more enormous, initiated the commonwealth’s approach to environmental impact assessment and challenged the ability of the national government to protect environmental values at all. The litigation was heavy and prolonged. In the end, federal environmental authority gained a significant foothold, but one insufficient to protect the natural and human resources at stake. The litigation also illustrated, as has been the experience in the United States, the critical importance of citizen enforcement actions and judicial review in securing the objectives of environmental law

Light from the Trees: The Story of Minors Oposa and the Russian Forest Cases

This article describes two lawsuits in the late twentieth century that changed their countries in ways from which there will be no return. One took place in the Philippines, emerging from the reign of Fernando Marcos, and the other in Russia, following a near century of communist rule. They have two things in common. They declared the rights of their citizens to challenge, and reverse, government decisions. And they were about the environment, more particularly, trees. What we learn is that notions of environmental protection, citizen enforcement and judicial review have traveled the world and that, in differing legal systems, at times against great odds, through a few remarkable lawyers, have produced astonishing results

Section 404: The Nasty Business of the Clean Water Act

9 pages. Contains references

Beauty and the Beast Within: On the Special Nature of Natural World Law

We are here to celebrate Professor Rodgers and his life in environmental law. As it happens, they grew up together. The new notion of environmental protection gave Bill the chance of his lifetime, to which he returned his full energies, ideas, and writings. In a world of failed relationships, this one was a howling success. Although we have not seen each other more than twice in forty years, I feel a kinship with Bill that seems particularly close. The link is not simply our ages, nor our passion for environmental law, nor even the activism in which both of us seem to be constantly embroiled. Rather, it is the particular kind of environmental law that brought us into the field and that, even today, gets us up in the morning, engines running, ready to go. In our hearts, we are driven by the natural world