Law Commons^™

The (Non)Uniqueness Of Environmental Law, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

In everyday discourse, the label "environmental law" signifies a distinct and unique area of the law. The uniqueness of environmental law stems most obviously from the subject matter of environmental legislation and regulation. But does environmental law also differ from other areas of law with respect to how judges ought to approach deciding cases? Should judges act differently somehow when they are deciding an environmental law case as opposed to, for example, a labor law or banking law case? At least one influential scholar - Richard Lazarus of the Georgetown University Law Center - has argued that the distinctive features …