ABSTRACT
The preceding two chapters of this text help to answer some important questions in our study of environmental law. We should now have some understanding of what we mean when we use the term environmental law, and also the kinds of legal frameworks that operate to implement environmental goals in the United States. Collectively, we should now have a sense of the kinds of legal tools that exist to help us respond to environmental problems. In this final chapter our focus turns to examples of laws that have been developed and implemented to deal with environmental problems. In many ways the goal of this chapter is not only to understand how the law has been applied to environmental problems, but also to critique those laws in light of the conceptual frameworks we have developed in the previous chapters. This dual goal is meant to provide us with a clear understanding of current iterations of environmental law (something that is important if we are to know the current state of the law), but also to help us see how legal frameworks are being used to achieve environmental goals. By bringing forward the materials from the previous two chapters, we may be able to identify where current laws fall short in their efforts to achieve environmental goals, and maybe even conceive of a different legal instrument capable of providing a clearer path to environmental goals. Or we may find that the current legal instrument being employed sufficiently meets its stated objectives. The point is that we actively engage the materials presented in this chapter using the previous chapters’ materials in order to gain a fuller perspective on the topic of environmental law by
critically examining the legal instruments being used to deal with current environmental problems. Through such critical analysis, one becomes more adept in the conceptual tools of the law, and therefore has a greater capacity to apply these principles to environmental problems outside the constructs of existing applications.*
In order to achieve the stated goals-understand current examples of environmental law and critique those examples-this chapter is set up in themes of environmental law that are chosen to help place the environmental problem at the center of our exploration, and then use specific environmental laws as the framework for addressing that problem. This approach is consistent with the purpose of this text where the aim is to understand the role of the law in environmental problems, rather than defining environmental problems through the legal structures that currently exist to deal with those problems. So, for example, we will find each section of this chapter looking at a theme that is normally encountered in environmental law. This begins with a preliminary discussion of preventative versus reactionary considerations in the law as a way of “priming” our thoughts around the thematic approaches presented. The focus in this first section is on how the law should respond to environmental problems, and whether different approaches (proactive versus reactive) can be linked to the kinds of problems presented; if there is a strong likelihood of an environmental problem occurring, and we have the ability to forecast this problem before it is fully realized, then should we proactively engage in solutions to this problem before it becomes fully realized? And if we agree on this kind of approach, what influence might different legal frameworks have in allowing for proactive approaches to problems?
