Law Commons^™

The Lesson Of The Red Squirrel: Consensus And Betrayal In The Environmental Statutes, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

Articles

The subjects of legislation and legislative change are undergoing a revival of sorts in United States' law schools. The academic community has offered a variety of theoretical visions on the nature of legislation—purposive and rational, irrational and political, the accidental outcome of competing interests, the imperfect product of high philosophy; the legislative process—formal and ritualistic, markets and auctions, plots and cabals, or publicregarding negotiations; and the individual legislators themselves—ritual players, auctioneers, maximizers of political gain, profiteers, and philosopher kings in shiny suits.

This author's personal approach to legal affairs of this sort is to draw on the laws of biology …

The Lesson Of The Owl And The Crows: The Role Of Deception In The Evolution Of The Environmental Statutes, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

Articles

In this world of strategies and counterstrategies, the advantages of the good fake are not to be overlooked. Fakery is an indelible part of the landscape in settings where we readily accept the gaming metaphor—sporting events are the obvious examples. But I wish to emphasize how fakery and deception can play an important role in legal interactions as well, particularly in the writing of the environmental statutes. Environmental lawyers often are fond of borrowing examples from natural history to illustrate propositions of law. There is more to this practice than habit, it seems to me, because the natural laws of …

The Political Economy Of Barry Commoner, James E. Krier

Articles

The centerpiece of what follows is an article by Barry Commoner that appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 1987.' The article, although an essentially popular work, is for several reasons worth the attention of a community professionally interested in law and the environment. First, it distills and supplements views that Commoner has advanced with much prominence throughout the life-twenty years to date-of the environmental movement in the United States. Thus it provides an opportunity for the present generation's students of environmental law, many of whom seem to know nothing of Commoner and his ideas, to become familiar with a …