Law Commons^™

Super Wicked Problems And Climate Change: Restraining The Present To Liberate The Future, Richard J. Lazarus

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Climate change may soon have its “lawmaking moment” in the United States. The inherent problem with such lawmaking moments, however, is just that: they are moments. What Congress and the President do with much fanfare can quickly and quietly slip away in the ensuing years. This is famously so for environmental law. Subsequent legislative amendments, limited budgets, appropriations riders, interpretive agency rulings, massive delays in rulemaking, and simple nonenforcement are more than capable of converting a seemingly uncompromising legal mandate into nothing more than a symbolic aspirational statement. Climate change legislation is especially vulnerable to being unraveled over time for …