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Social Movements, Law, And Society: The Institutionalization Of The Environmental Movement, Cary Coglianese

University of Pennsylvania Law Review

As conventionally understood, social movements, law reform, and society interact in a unidirectional fashion. Social movements seek to secure law reform; in turn, changes in the law bring about changes in society. While this conventional understanding may be helpful for some purposes, it is an incomplete empirical account that can lead reformers mistakenly to think that legal change is sufficient in order to achieve changed social conditions. In fact, social movements, law, and society interact with each other in much more complex, dynamic ways. Through an examination of the environmental movement in the United States, I show how a successful …