BiblioVault - Books about Lazarus, Richard J.

The Making of Environmental Law

Richard J. Lazarus

University of Chicago Press, 2022

An updated and passionate second edition of a foundational book.

How did environmental law first emerge in the United States? Why has it evolved in the ways that it has? And what are the unique challenges inherent to environmental lawmaking in general and in the United States in particular?

Since its first edition, The Making of Environmental Law has been foundational to our understanding of these questions. For the second edition, Richard J. Lazarus returns to his landmark book and takes stock of developments over the last two decades. Drawing on many years of experience on the frontlines of legal and policy battles, Lazarus provides a theoretical overview of the challenges that environmental protection poses for lawmaking, related to both the distinctive features of US lawmaking institutions and the spatial and temporal dimensions of ecological change. The book explains why environmental law emerged in the manner and form that it did in the 1970s and traces how it developed over sequent decades through key laws and controversies. New chapters, composing more than half of the second edition, examine a host of recent developments. These include how Congress dropped out of environmental lawmaking in the early twenty-first century; the shifting role of the judiciary; long-overdue efforts to provide environmental justice to disadvantaged communities; and the destabilization of environmental law that has resulted from the election of Presidents with dramatically clashing environmental policies.

As the nation’s partisan divide has grown deeper and the challenge of climate change has dramatically raised the perceived stakes for opposing interests, environmental law is facing its greatest challenges yet. This book is essential reading for understanding where we have been and what challenges and opportunities lie ahead. 

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The Making of Environmental Law

Richard J. Lazarus

University of Chicago Press, 2004

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.

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The Rule of Five

Making Climate History at the Supreme Court

Richard J. Lazarus

Harvard University Press, 2020

Winner of the Julia Ward Howe Prize

“The gripping story of the most important environmental law case ever decided by the Supreme Court.”
—Scott Turow

“In the tradition of A Civil Action, this book makes a compelling story of the court fight that paved the way for regulating the emissions now overheating the planet. It offers a poignant reminder of how far we’ve come—and how far we still must go.”
—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

On an unseasonably warm October morning, an idealistic young lawyer working on a shoestring budget for an environmental organization no one had heard of hand-delivered a petition to the Environmental Protection Agency, asking it to restrict greenhouse gas emissions from new cars. The Clean Air Act authorized the EPA to regulate “any air pollutant” thought to endanger public health. But could carbon dioxide really be considered a harmful pollutant? And even if the EPA had the authority to regulate emissions, could it be forced to do so?

The Rule of Five tells the dramatic story of how Joe Mendelson and the band of lawyers who joined him carried his case all the way to the Supreme Court. It reveals how accident, infighting, luck, superb lawyering, politics, and the arcane practices of the Supreme Court collided to produce a legal miracle. The final ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, by a razor-thin 5–4 margin brilliantly crafted by Justice John Paul Stevens, paved the way to important environmental safeguards which the Trump administration fought hard to unravel and many now seek to expand.

“There’s no better book if you want to understand the past, present, and future of environmental litigation.”
—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction

“A riveting story, beautifully told.”
—Foreign Affairs

“Wonderful…A master class in how the Supreme Court works and, more broadly, how major cases navigate through the legal system.”
—Science

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