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The Identifiability Of Bias In Environmental Law, Shi-Ling Hsu Jan 2008

The Identifiability Of Bias In Environmental Law, Shi-Ling Hsu

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The identifiability effect is the human propensity to have stronger emotions regarding identifiable individuals or groups than for abstract ones. The more information that is available about a person, the more likely this person’s situation will influence human decisionmaking. This human propensity has biased law and public policy against environmental and ecological protection because the putative economic victims of environmental regulation are usually easily identifiable workers that lose their jobs, while the beneficiaries—people who avoid a premature death from air or water pollution, people who would be saved by medicinal compounds available only in rare plant and animal species, and …


On The Role Of Cost-Benefit Analysis In Environmental Law: A Book Review Of Frank Ackerman And Lisa Heinzerling's Priceless: On Knowing The Price Of Everything And The Value Of Nothing, Shi-Ling Hsu Jan 2005

On The Role Of Cost-Benefit Analysis In Environmental Law: A Book Review Of Frank Ackerman And Lisa Heinzerling's Priceless: On Knowing The Price Of Everything And The Value Of Nothing, Shi-Ling Hsu

Scholarly Publications

Legal scholarship on the role of cost-benefit analysis in environmental law is often stimulating, but does not seem to be changing anybody's mind. The entrenchment of a camp of detractors and a camp of advocates of cost-benefit analysis parallels the impasse that has stymied environmental law for over a decade. Professors Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling have coauthored a book that captures most of the arguments from the detractor side, and they have done so skillfully and powerfully. However, this Review criticizes the book's contribution to perpetuating this intellectual stalemate. The book does this by focusing on an environmental theory …