Ecological restoration is as essential as sustainable development for the health of the biosphere. Restoration, however, has been a low priority of most countries' environmental laws, which tend to focus narrowly on rehabilitation of small, discrete sites rather than the more ambitious recovery of entire ecosystems and landscapes. Through critical theoretical perspectives and topical case studies, this book's diverse contributors explore a more ambitious agenda for ecological restoration law. Not only do they investigate current laws and other governance mechanisms; they also consider the philosophical and methodological bases for the law to take ecological restoration more seriously. Through exploration of themes relating to time, space, geography, semiotics, social justice, and scientific knowledge, this book offers innovative and critical insights into ecological restoration law.

"The Restoration Lawyer" Ed Cross has been collecting money for restorers across the United States since 1997, representing everything from small sole proprietorships to the biggest names in the restoration industry. He has recovered many tens of millions of dollars for restoration services, often avoiding litigation, and overcoming problems with adjuster lowballing, the inappropriate use of standardized prices, interference from third party consultants and bill reviewers, workmanship complaints from customers, and vigorous opposition from lawyers representing carriers and policyholders. The Book on Restoration Collections shares his battle-tested 10-step process to cutting through insurance red tape to accelerate and maximize receivables. STEP 1: Build a Powerful Restoration Contract STEP 2: Document the File to be Lucrative STEP 3: Be in the Loop for Every Communication with the Adjuster STEP 4: Defeat Attempts to Use Standardized Prices as Global Prices STEP 5: Neutralize Adjuster Excuses & Cut Through the Smokescreen STEP 6: Overcome Challenges from Third Party Consultants STEP 7: Keep Insurance Proceeds Away from Mortgage Companies STEP 8: Gradually Escalate Collection Efforts STEP 9: Properly Leverage Mechanic's Liens STEP 10: Decide If, When and Whom to Sue Ed Cross recommends that contractors seriously consider obtaining Assignments of Insurance Rights from their customers to allow direct billing to insurance. In the first book in this series, The Book on the Assignment of Benefits, he explains how Assignments work, how to present them to customers and insurers, and how to prosecute them. It includes Assignment of Insurance Rights forms and Notice of Assignment form letters for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. This book picks up where the Assignments book left off, and includes downloadable demand letters in MS Word format for use when the restorer has an assignment and hits an impasse with the carrier.

Human activities are depleting ecosystems at an unprecedented rate. In spite of nature conservation efforts worldwide, many ecosystems including those critical for human well-being have been damaged or destroyed. States and citizens need a new vision of how humans can reconnect with the natural environment. With its focus on the long-term holistic recovery of ecosystems, ecological restoration has received increasing attention in the past decade from both scientists and policymakers. Research on the implications of ecological restoration for the law and law for ecological restoration has been largely overlooked. This is the first published book to examine comprehensively the relationship between international environmental law and ecological restoration. While international environmental law (IEL) has developed significantly as a discipline over the past four decades, this book enquires whether IEL can now assist states in making a strategic transition from not just protecting and maintaining the natural environment but also actively restoring it. Arguing that states have international duties to restore, this book offers reflections on the philosophical context of ecological restoration and the legal content of a duty to restore from an international law, European Union law and national law perspective. The book concludes with a discussion of several contemporary themes of interest to both lawyers and ecologists including the role of private actors, protected areas and climate change in ecological restoration.

This book explores the critical role of law in protecting - and protecting against - religious beliefs in American health care.

One of the most respected and influential scholars of religious liberty in our time, Douglas Laycock has argued many crucial religious liberty cases in the U.S. appellate courts and Supreme Court. His noteworthy scholarly and popular writings are being collected in four comprehensive volumes under the title Religious Liberty. This first volume gives the big picture of religious liberty in the United States, fitting a vast range of disparate disputes into a coherent pattern - from public school prayers to private school vouchers to regulation of churches and believers. Laycock's clear overviews provide the broad, historical, helpful context often lacking in today's press.

Demostrates how term limits, by altering the motives of legislators, can narrow the gap between the theory and the practice of American democracy.