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Debunking the “divine conception” myth
Blumm, Michael C.
Blumm, Michael C.
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"According to the standard account of the origins of environmental law, the field burst upon the legal scene in the early 1970s on the heels of the first Earth Day as a kind of “divine conception,” somewhat like the “miracle in Philadelphia” in the summer of 1787. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was actually enacted four months before Earth Day, as the first statute of the decade; the Clean Air and Water and Endangered Species Acts all followed within three years. By the end of the decade, the nation had a comprehensive hazardous waste statute, safe drinking water legislation, a program to remediate waste sites, and new federal planning programs for federal lands. It was a dizzying time, to be sure. This model of a “continuous interplay of human action, natural response and legal change” is surely a better depiction of how laws are actually made and evolve than the more formalistic view—still held by many members of the Senate Judiciary Committee—that law is made exclusively by elected representatives or reviewing courts. For both of these lessons, Karl Brooks’ valuable survey of environmental law during the post-war years before NEPA is worthy of a place on many bookshelves and in many classrooms." (p.1, 6)
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2010
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With permission of the license/copyright holder