In 2023, the Supreme Court made one of its most devastating rulings in environmental history. By narrowing the legal definition of 'waters of the United States' (WOTUS), the court opened the floodgates to unregulated pollution. But while tremendously consequential, the decision was also simply the latest in a long series of battles over WOTUS, and which rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, wetlands, and perhaps even farm fields were to be protected by the Clean Water Act of 1972.

Waters of the United States is an unprecedented exploration of this history--and its importance for today's efforts to conserve a critical natural resource. The book not only examines how bodies of water are legally defined (and therefore protected), but who gets to decide on these definitions. The result is a fascinating look at the ongoing power struggle between the president and federal agencies, the courts, the states, and Congress, over water quality.

Waters of the United States offers the detailed analysis necessary for any lawyer or environmental advocate to understand the nuances of water policy, while spinning a compelling narrative for readers who have never cracked a law book. The unique mix of insights into environmental law, history, and politics is required reading for anyone who cares about the future of the nation's water.

This textbook, by three experts in the field, provides a comprehensive overview of international climate change law. Climate change is one of the fundamental challenges facing the world today, and is the cause of significant international concern. In response, states have created an international climate regime. The treaties that comprise the regime - the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement establish a system of governance to address climate change and its impacts. This book provides a clear analytical guide to the climate regime, as well as other relevant international legal rules.

A veteran environmentalist shares her roadmap to a healthier world--one that uses the law to empower activists and provide hope for communities everywhere.

We have reached a critical tipping point in our fight for the environment: Corporations profit off climate change, natural disasters devastate homes, and the most vulnerable suffer the health effects of pollution. Yet our laws are designed to accommodate this destruction rather than prevent it. Without government support, it's no wonder people feel powerless.

But there is a solution. In The Green Amendment, veteran environmentalist Maya K. van Rossum presents her radically simple plan for a green future: bypass local laws and turn to the ultimate authority--our state and federal constitutions--to ensure we have the right to a healthy environment.

Through compelling interviews with activists on the ground, clear evidence from experts, and heartbreaking stories from those hit hardest by environmental ruin, The Green Amendment lights the path forward. In this updated edition of her trailblazing 2017 book, van Rossum invites readers to join the movement by sharing:

• Why Green Amendments work where other movements have failed
• How to position Green Amendments and what specific language offers the strongest legal protections
• How to argue in favor of environmental rights, and the economic and health benefits that will help activists make the case
• How Green Amendments address the crucial intersection of environmentalism and anti-racism
• What everyone--from artists and students to scientists and lawyer--can do to further the cause

With the power of The Green Amendment, we can claim our environmental rights, ensuring a clean, safe Earth for generations to come.

The Most Dangerous Branch exposes the Supreme Court's unbridled hostility towards environmental programs over the past forty years. In no other field has it been so consistent in ruling against the environmental statutes, agencies, and organizations. In fourteen separate cases, the book describes what was at stake, what the lower courts did, and then their final dismissal, it closes with consideration of why the Court has acted this way, and what might be done about it.

Oliver Houck's latest book on the Supreme Court and environmental law is a true tour de force. No one can match Houck's passion, eloquence, and breadth of expertise as he dissects fifty years of Court rulings that have systematically undermined the nation's ability to protect our natural environment.

Professor Richard Lazarus, Harvard Professor of Law and author of The Rule of Five, a legal history of the Court's climate change opinion, Massachusetts v EPA.

Oliver Houck is one of the most important and influential environmental attorneys in America. He also manages to write not just clearly, but brilliantly. His work has re-shaped many courtrooms, and his words may reshape the way you think.

John Barry, Historian and author of Rising Tide, The Great Influenza, and Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul.

As ill-disposed as the Supreme Court has been toward Civil Rights, as Professor Houck has demonstrated its track record on Environmental Protection is yet worse. The Court's trashing of both Civil and Environmental Rights is not accidental, and will have repercussions for decades to come. One hopes that this book and others will help stem the tide

Lawrence Powell, Professor of History, Tulane University, and author of Troubled Memory: the Holocaust and David Duke's Louisiana.

Fifty years ago Georgia chose how it would use the natural environment of its coast. The General Assembly passed the Coastal Marshlands Protection Act in 1970, and, surprisingly, Lester Maddox, a governor who had built a conservative reputation by defending segregation, signed it into law. With this book, Paul Bolster narrates the politics of the times and brings to life the political leaders and the coalition of advocates who led Georgia to pass the most comprehensive protection of marshlands along the Atlantic seaboard.

Saving the Georgia Coast brings to light the intriguing and colorful characters who formed that coalition: wealthy island owners, hunters and fishermen, people who made their home on the coast, courageous political leaders, garden-club members, clean-water protectors, and journalists. It explores how that political coalition came together behind governmental leaders and traces the origins of environmental organizations that continue to impact policy today. Saving the Georgia Coast enhances the reader's understanding of the many steps it takes for a bill to become a law.

Bolster's account reviews state policy toward the coast today, giving the reader an opportunity to compare yesterday to the present. Current demands on the coastal environment are different--including spaceports and sea rise from climate change--but the political pressures to generate new wealth and new jobs, or to perch a home on the edge of the sea, are no different than fifty years ago. Saving the Georgia Coast spotlights the past and present decisions needed to balance human desires with the limits of what nature has to offer.

This book considers the everyday conduits through which climate instability is revealing itself: the storm sewer drain on your street, the powerlines transporting your electricity, the mix of vegetation in your backyard or neighborhood park - these are the pathways through which climate change is most likely to impact your life. For many, these are the last places we expect it to. The first book to establish a framework for climate change adaptation, Stone's aim is to understand how climate change is altering our lives in the present period - this period of transition between the ancient, stable climate of our ancestors and the unfolding, no longer stable climate of our children - and how our cities might adapt to these changes. Stone's concern is with the risks posed by a new environmental regime for which our modes of living are ill-adapted, and with how these modes of living must be altered - radically altered - to persist in a climate changed world.

This book explores the movement towards the recognition of animal sentience in the law. It explores some first principles underpinning the recognition of animal sentience, including the nature and scope of sentience provisions, the connection between sentience and empathy, drafting issues, and the relationship between sentience recognition and animal rights. The book highlights the operation of animal sentience provisions in several jurisdictions throughout the world and considers some sector-specific applications and limitations of animal sentience recognition.

The first book of its kind, it draws together different perspectives as to what this novel turn in the law might mean and where it might lead. The chapters provide a full picture of what the recognition of animal sentience might entail for humans, animals, and our environment, as well as the experiences of different legal jurisdictions in pursuing recognition of animal sentience.

This collection is an essential read for both practitioners and academics alike, as well as any group seeking to advance the interests of non-human animals.

Do animals have legal rights? This pioneering book tells readers everything they need to know about animal rights law.

Using straightforward examples from over 30 legal systems from both the civil and common law traditions, and based on popular courses run by the authors at the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights, the book takes the reader from the earliest anti-cruelty laws to modern animal welfare laws, to recent attempts to grant basic rights and personhood to animals. To help readers understand this legal evolution, it explains the ethics, legal theory, and social issues behind animal rights and connected topics such as property, subjecthood, dignity, and human rights.

The book's companion website (bloomsbury.pub/animal-rights-law) provides access to briefs on the latest developments in this fast-changing area, and gives readers the tools to investigate their own legal systems with a list of key references to the latest cases, legislation, and jurisdiction-specific bibliographic references.

Rich in exercises and study aids, this easy-to-use introduction is a prime resource for students from all disciplines and for anyone else who wants to understand how animals are protected by the law.

This edited collection proposes a wide range of approaches to address the legal issues pertaining to the end of the fossil fuel era. While the fossil fuel era is coming to an end both because of the inherent limits of its resources and because of the need to prevent to further pump out CO2 in an already saturated atmosphere, the legal dispositions to ensure an ordered and rational shift toward cleaner energy still need to be developed. Not only in relation to CO2 emissions themselves but also in relation to the manifold issues related to environmental justice in an era of global climate change and global warming. This book is unique in that it provides a theoretical framework but also works to address cutting edge issues through a series of case studies.

This book examines the practice of risk allocation in the offshore energy industry through the public policy lens and offers a novel perspective on the concept of gross negligence in risk allocation. This perspective is founded on the proportionality element of distributive justice in burden distribution. The assessment of how mutual indemnity clauses apply as an absolute shield against liability arising from gross negligence reveals that moral hazard can result from the practice.
In the analysis, this book considers the risk allocation practice in PSC and Concession regimes and how parties' liability is determined in drilling contracts. This book considers gross negligence a sui generis risk and provides a definitional pathway for determining when gross negligence occurs and how it should apply to offshore drilling contracts. Thus, it advances an environmental sustainability approach to offshore petroleum drilling operations. This book will be useful to operators and contractors, resource-rich countries, insurance companies, practitioners, scholars, and academics interested in risk allocation in the petroleum industry.

This book addresses the relationship between efficient management of critical minerals and sustainability in the Global South, including Sub-Saharan Africa.

Critical minerals are essential raw materials for the technologies that are pivotal in today's energy transition. However, critical mineral host states and communities face social, economic, ecological, political, technological, and governance injustices. The book contends that the criteria currently used in assessing criticality and critical mineral development do not fulfil the sustainable development ambitions of developing countries and that broader considerations must be taken into account to include the stakeholders involved as well as the spatial dimension of the critical mineral value chain.

In particular, the book argues that the law must consider the broader context in which minerals become critical to particular processes. It positions this argument within the current context of climate change, the just energy transition, the minerals-energy nexus, and geopolitical tensions.

By analysing the copper-cobalt value chain through case studies on DRC, Zambia, China, and the EU, the book provides new avenues for critical mineral development and acknowledges the necessity for sustainability amidst the exacerbated impacts of climate change.

Addressing a key challenge of the global energy transition, the book argues for a just holistic framework, which includes parameters such as domestic value addition, human rights in business development, environmental sensitivity, the development of communication channels from remote marginalised communities to international policymakers, and the re-designing of criticality considerations beyond supply and economic aspects.

The chapters in this volume provide an interdisciplinary and comparative analysis of the implementation of climate change policies worldwide to assess whether they are meeting the aims set out in the 'Paris Agreement'. The first part compares climate policies employed by the EU, the US, Latin America, Russia, China, the Middle East, and Africa. The second explores ways of improving key regulatory mechanisms to increase the effectiveness of greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation measures. This book argues that the international community should improve the effectiveness of enforcement mechanisms from the standpoint of secondary norms through an integrated approach. It is an indispensable resource for undergraduate and graduate students of environmental policy and governance, public policy, law and political science, as well as policy makers. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available as Open Access. Check our website - Cambridge Core - for details. (150, 992)

The environmental field and its regulations have evolved significantly since Congress passed the first environmental law in 1970, and the Environmental Law Handbook, published just three years later, has been indispensable to students and professionals ever since. The authors provide clear and accessible explanations, expert legal insight into new and evolving regulations, and reliable compliance and management guidance.

The Environmental Law Handbook continues to provide individuals across the country--professionals, professors, and students--with a comprehensive, up-to-date, and easy-to-read look at the major environmental, health, and safety laws affecting U.S. businesses and organizations. Because it is written by the country's leading environmental law firms, it provides the best, most reliable guidance anywhere.

Both professional environmental managers and students aspiring to careers in environmental management should keep the Environmental Law Handbook within arm's reach for thoughtful answers to regulatory questions like:

• How do I ensure compliance with the regulations?
• How do the latest environmental developments impact my operations?
• How do we keep our operations efficient and our community safe?

The Handbook begins with chapters on the fundamentals of environmental law and on issues of enforcement and liability. It then dives headfirst into the major laws, examining their history, scope, and requirements with a chapter devoted to each.

The 25th edition of this well-known Handbook has been thoroughly updated, covering major changes to the law and enforcement in the areas of Clean Air, Clean Water, Climate Change, Oil Pollution, and Pollution Prevention. This is an essential reference for environmental students and professionals, and anyone who wants the most up-to-date information available on environmental laws.

Set in Appalachian coal country, this superb (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) legal drama follows one determined lawyer as he faces a coal industry giant in a seven-year battle over clean drinking water for a West Virginia community.

For two decades, the water in the taps and wells of Mingo County didn't look, smell, or taste right. Could the water be the root of the health problems--from kidney stones to cancer--in this Appalachian community? Environmental lawyer Kevin Thompson certainly thought so.

For seven years, Thompson waged an epic legal battle against Massey Energy, West Virginia's most powerful coal company, helmed by CEO Don Blankenship. While Massey's lawyers worked out of a gray glass office tower in Charleston known as the Death Star, Thompson set up shop in a ramshackle hotel in the fading coal town of Williamson. Working with fellow lawyers and a crew of young activists, Thompson would eventually uncover the ruthless shortcuts that put the community's drinking water at risk.

Retired coal miners, women whose families had lived in the area's coal camps for generations, a respected preacher and his brother, all put their trust in Thompson when they had nowhere else to turn. Desperate is a masterful work of investigative reporting about greed and denial, both a case study in exploitation of the little guy and a playbook for confronting it (Kirkus Reviews). Maher crafts a revealing portrait of a town besieged by hardship and heartbreak, and an inspiring account of one tenacious environmental lawyer's mission to expose the truth and demand justice.

Written by two internationally respected authors, this unique primer distills the environmental law and policy of the United States into a practical guide for a nonlegal audience, as well as for lawyers trained in other regions. The first part of the book explains the basics of the American legal system: key actors, types of laws, and overarching legal strategies for environmental management. The second part delves into specific environmental issues (pollution, ecosystem management, and climate change) and how American law addresses each. Chapters include summaries of key concepts, discussion questions, and a glossary of terms, as well as informative spotlights--brief overviews of topics. With a highly accessible structure and useful illustrative features, A Guide to U.S. Environmental Law is a long-overdue synthetic reference on environmental law for students and for those who work in environmental policy or environmental science. Pairing this book with its companion, A Guide to EU Environmental Law, allows for a comparative look at how two of the most important jurisdictions in the world deal with key environmental problems.

This handbook is a comprehensive guide to the federal Endangered Species Act, the primary U.S. law aimed at protecting species of animals and plants from human threats to their survival. The Act protects not only threatened and endangered animals and plants, but their habitats as well, from direct and indirect threats such as hunting and development. Enacted in 1973 without opposition, the Act has over the past 27 years become a focal point for controversy, as efforts to protect species have clashed with traditional views of economic progress. Despite the often heated debate, the Act enters the 21st century essentially unchanged.

This handbook, intended for lawyers, government agency employees, students, community activists, businesspeople, and anyone else who needs to understand the Endangered Species Act, guides the reader through the Act's provisions, including the procedures for listing species and designating their critical habitats, the requirements the Act places on federal agencies, and the scope of protections afforded to listed species. It contains a discussion of the modern extinction crisis and a brief history of endangered species protection in the United States. The handbook also explains how the Act and its implementing regulations have been interpreted by courts over the years. It provides valuable tips for citizens who wish to become involved in application and enforcement of the Act. The handbook includes the text of the Act, as well as a bibliography of related legislative materials, case law, and legal scholarship.

Wild law is a groundbreaking approach to law that stresses human dependence on nature. For the first time, this volume brings together voices from the leading proponents of wild law around the world. It introduces readers to the idea of wild law and considers its relationship to environmental law, the rights of nature, science, religion, property law and international governance.

Environmental law is the law concerned with environmental problems. It is a vast area of law that operates from the local to the global, involving a range of different legal and regulatory techniques. In theory, environmental protection is a no brainer. Few people would actively argue for pollution or environmental destruction. Ensuring a clean environment is ethically desirable, and also sensible from a purely self-interested perspective. Yet, in practice, environmental law is a messy and complex business fraught with conflict. Whilst environmental law is often characterized in overly simplistic terms, with a law being seen as be a simple solution to environmental problems, the reality is that creating and maintaining a body of laws to address and avoid problems is not easy, and involves legislators, courts, regulators and communities.

This Very Short Introduction provides an overview of the main features of environmental law, and discusses how environmental law deals with multiple interests, socio-political conflicts, and the limits of knowledge about the environment. Showing how interdependent societies across the world have developed robust and legitimate bodies of law to address environmental problems, Elizabeth Fisher discusses some of the major issues involved in environmental law's: nation statehood, power, the reframing role of law, the need to ensure real environmental improvements, and environmental justice. As Fisher explains, environmental law is, and will always be, inherently controversial.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

This book investigates the epistemological and ethical challenges faced by studies exploring the relations between climate change and human migration. At the heart of the contemporary preoccupation with climate change is a concern for its societal impacts. Among these, its presumed effect on human migration is perhaps the most politically resonant, regardless of whether that politics is oriented towards human or national security.

There is, however, a problem: research on the causal link between climate change and migration has shown it to be a highly equivocal one. By extension, it remains unclear what - if any - response is required from law and policy.

Carefully structured to guide the reader through the issue of 'climate migration' in a logical and rigorous manner, this book is the first to bring together key critiques, caveats, and cautions in order to systematically examine the challenges facing law, policy, and research on the topic.

At a time in which both the effects of climate change and the causes of migration are of great public and political interest, and in which these interests are often fraught with sentiment and freighted with politics, the book brings dispassionately critical perspectives to bear on a topic that desperately needs it.