Videopapers and Teacher Education

An article about trialling videopapers, a project made possible by an ESCalate small grant

Thirty Years of Environmental Protection Law in the Supreme Court

It is an honor to present a lecture named after Lloyd Garrison and to be here at Pace Law School. It is especially fitting, of course, that the first Garrison Lecture was presented by Pace\u27s own David Sive. Professor Sive, as we all know, worked closely with Garrison on the celebrated Scenic Hudson litigation. Few legal counsel have been so closely identified with the emergence of the environmental law profession during the past three decades. Indeed, if there were such a thing as a legal thesaurus that linked substantive areas of law with lawyers and one looked up environ-mental law, its first synonym would undoubtedly be David Sive. I do not and could not, however, make claim to the extraordinary pedigree of David Sive: one of the first of the very first generation of modern environmental lawyers in this country. Nor can a fair comparison be made to the other three Garrison Lecturers who preceded me: Professors Joe Sax, Bill Rodgers, and Oliver Houck. These are true pioneers. They inspired much in the formation of modern environmental protection law, and have served since in their scholarship and their legal counsel as the law\u27s guardians and promoters. But what I strive to claim is a close lineage, as the first of the second generation of environmental lawyers and scholars to deliver this lecture. I use the term lineage deliberately. For although I did not then know any of them by name, it was the work of Lloyd Garrison, David Sive, and the others that resulted in my own decision to engage in the study and practice of environmental law

Human Nature, the Laws of Nature, and the Nature of Environmental Law

The essay is divided into three parts. Part I considers the ways in which the need for environmental law derives from the tendency of human nature to cause adverse environmental consequences and the ways in which the laws of nature make it more difficult to prevent those consequences absent the imposition of external legal rules. Part II describes how our nation\u27s lawmaking institutions are similarly challenged by the laws of nature. This includes a discussion of how the kinds of laws necessary to bridge the gap between human nature and the laws of nature are systematically difficult for our lawmaking institutions to develop in the first instance and to maintain over time. Part III takes a closer look at one of the nation\u27s most important legal institutions - the United States Supreme Court - and briefly discusses both its past shortcomings in environmental lawmaking and its potential in the future. This part of the essay includes some analysis of the Court\u27s deliberations in specific environmental cases, as revealed by the recently disclosed official papers of Justice Harry Blackmun

Changing Conceptions of Property and Sovereignty in Natural Resources Law: Questioning the Public Trust Doctrine

This Article considers and evaluates the \u27public trust doctrine, one of the most remarkable legal bases upon which natural resources law has relied in this ongoing transformation. The public trust doctrine is based on an amorphous notion that has been with us since the days of Justinian - the notion that the public possesses inviolable rights in certain natural resources. Commentators first hailed the doctrine in 1970 as offering the most promising legal basis upon which individual members of the public could maintain a lawsuit to protect natural resources from needless degradation and destruction. In the seminal article on the trust doctrine, Professor Joseph Sax reconstructed how the mostly dormant doctrine had historically functioned in the United States to safeguard public rights in navigable waterways, and he predicted that the doctrine could expand to embrace broader environmental concerns

A Different Kind of Republican Moment in Environmental Law

The purpose of this Essay is to propose and discuss the possibility that the nation currently faces another, albeit very different, republican moment that may well test the future of environmental protection laws in the United States. This new moment has as its modifier an uppercase Republican rather than a lowercase republican. While the latter republican invokes the political tradition referred to as civic republicanism, the former Republican refers instead to the current National Republican Party. The moment facing environmental law is the virtually unprecedented ascendancy of the Republican Party in all three branches of the federal government

“Environmental Racism! That’s What It Is.”

In this essay, Professor Lazarus discusses former NAACP director the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Chavis\u27s characterization of U.S. environmental policy as environmental racism. He first justifies this provocative topic choice and then suggests that Chavis\u27s allegation has transformed environmental law. Professor Lazarus next discusses the details of this transformation, arguing that Rev. Chavis has essentially reshaped the way environmental law and justice are conceived. He offers examples of various environmental programs and social and political effects traceable to Chavis\u27s environmental racism comment. Finally, the conclusion provides some of the author\u27s ruminations about the future of environmental law and policy

The Tragedy of Distrust in the Implementation of Federal Environmental Law

The relationship between the EPA and Congress Since the founding of the EPA in 1970 has been marked by congressional oversight that has seriously frustrated the development and implementation of federal environmental protection policy. A destructive cycle has emerged: agency distrust has led to the failure of its policies, creating further distrust and further failure