ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses critical analysis of legal discourse to examine the language creating and enforcing legislation through an examination of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA) and the debates over its passage throughout the 1970s. SMCRA regulated mining in east and west quite differently as Congress saw different needs for each region. Through this, legislation created different institutionalized forms for mining processes in the different regions. The chapter traces the multi-directionality of social construction as embodied in the legal process and shows how examination of the legal process adds a dimension to the social construction of region and scale. It lays out the concept of the institutional imagination as one way to examine social construction within legal systems and examines the strengths and weaknesses of study at the intersections of law and geography. The chapter illustrates the processes involved in these constructions through an examination of the passage and substance of surface mining law.
