Publisher Description

Environmental common law litigation has reemerged in recent years as a powerful second pathway alongside statutory avenues for practitioners, communities, and governments to seek redress to environmental wrongs. Creative Common Law Strategies for Protecting the Environment vividly illustrates that "environmental common law" has never been more alive, and perhaps more needed for meeting complex environmental challenges, than it is today. This book provides an overview of the major common law remedies, and describes the limits of using statutory remedies under environmental citizen suit provisions. The authors describe their experiences in bringing cutting-edge public nuisance actions against car manufacturers and large power producers because of their greenhouse gas emissions; successful products liability actions against the manufacturers of PERC and MTBE for groundwater contamination; path-breaking litigation filed by public entities against the lead paint industry; lawsuits under the public trust doctrine and other common law doctrines to protect water, fish, and wildlife . . . and much more.

Since 1970, when the Clean Air Act was passed and the Environmental Protection Agency was created, the primary means for addressing environmental problems in the U.S. has been through comprehensive federal statutes and detailed regulations. Evaluating almost three decades of experience with the Clean Air Act, Superfund, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other major federal environmental statutes, the contributors to this volume question the effectiveness and impact of the legal regime that created these regulations. While most studies of environmental policy paint a picture of improvement through government initiatives, these essays argue the contrary. Pointing to Cleveland's burning river, the death of Lake Erie, smog in Los Angeles, and Love Canal, the contributors demonstrate that command-and-control regulation of the environment has not delivered the great improvements in environmental quality as promised. The Common Law and the Environment offers principles for a new approach to protecting the environment and looks to evidence of the successes of alternative legal systems to address significant problems.

Defending the Environment provides the means for nongovernmental organizations, community groups, and individuals to bring environmental and public health problems to the attention of international courts, tribunals, and commissions, or to their domestic counterparts. It suggests specific strategies and provides detailed information for taking action. This revised and updated edition also contains new case studies of the application of those strategies that has occurred in recent years. Each chapter provides a description of the institutional mechanisms that can potentially receive, review, and remedy the alleged violation, along with a set of guidelines that explain how the reader can employ a particular strategy, and an example that indicates the effectiveness of a given strategy. In addition, the book offers an appendix that lists individuals and organizations who can assist with the various strategies described. Defending the Environment represents the first concise, comprehensive guide to international environmental law and institutions that offers readers hands-on strategies for addressing environmental and public health problems.

Within the broad framework of the common law of tort,the torts of nuisance and the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher are central to the protection of the rights of landowners to use and enjoy their land without unreasonable interference and to be free from material damage to their interests. Negligence actions can also serve to promote the protection of personal and property interests. Yet toxic torts are often seen as being beset by theoretical and practical drawbacks. Overall there are serious concerns about the continued value of common law principles as an effective and coherent system that is geared to protecting the environment. Environmental law is increasingly developing its own statutory regimes to address a range of environmental problems. This accentuates the sense in which the aims and reach of these two different branches of the law appear to be diverging. Questions inevitably arise about the inter-relationship between private law sphere of tort and public regulatory schemes. The contributors to this volume of essays include many of the UK's leading academics in the relevant fields of private and public law. While the essays are broadly based, the focus of the book is on the challenges posed by accommodating tort with environmental law.

The environment has not always been protected by law. It was not until the middle of the 20th century that ‘the environment’ came to be understood as an entity in need of special care, and the law-politics duo firmly fixed its focus on this issue. In this book Wickham and Goodie tell the story of how law and politics first came upon the environment as an object in need of special attention. They outline the unlikely intersection of aesthetics and science that made ‘the environment’ into the matter of great concern it is today. The book describes the way private common-law strategies and public-law legislative strategies have approached the task of protecting the environment, and explore the greatest environmental challenge to have so far confronted environmental law and politics; the threat of global climate change. The book offers descriptions of many of the strategies being deployed to meet this challenge and present some troubling assessments of them. The book will be of great interest to students, teachers, and researchers of environmental law, socio-legal studies, environmental studies, and political theory.

When you purchase a new version of this casebook from the LIFT Program, you receive 1-year FREE digital access to the corresponding Examples & Explanations in your course area. Now available in an interactive study center, Examples & Explanations offer hypothetical questions complemented by detailed explanations that allow you to test your knowledge of the topics covered in class. Starting July 1, 2017, if your new casebook purchase does not come with an access code on the inside cover of the book, please contact Wolters Kluwer customer service. The email address and phone number for customer service are on the copyright page, found within the first few pages, of your casebook. Environmental Protection: Law and Policy welcomes Daniel Bodansky, a leading expert on global climate change and international law, as its distinguished new co-author. Completely updated and revised, the Sixth Edition offers a new chapter covering climate change and a substantially revised chapter on international environmental law. Environmental Protection: Law and Policy, now in its Sixth Edition, features a complete introduction to the history of environmental protection, laws and regulations, regulatory design strategies, and policy objectives analysis of constitutional federalism and related policy questions concerning the design and implementation of environmental protection programs an international and interdisciplinary approach that incorporates science, economics, and ethics coverage of the major federal pollution control laws--the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, CERCLA, and more two chapters on natural resource management issues, focusing on the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, but also including national forest management landmark and cutting-edge cases with explanatory text, notes and questions charts and graphics, plus numerous exercises and problems. Author website, Teacher's Manual, and annual summer Professor's Updates Completely updated, the Sixth Edition includes a new chapter on climate change that covers important scientific, policy, and program design questions coverage of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill and its implications for environmental assessment, common law liability, remediation of oil spills, and imposition of liability under the Oil Pollution Act a new section providing comparative analysis of remediation of chemical and oil spills under CERCLA, RCRA, and the Oil Pollution Act substantial revision of the chapter on international environmental law recent developments in preemption law important cases decided by the Supreme Court and the federal Courts of Appeals since the publication of the last edition new problems and streamlined text and note materials