Thirty Years of Environmental Protection Law in the Supreme Court

Abstract

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