Editors' Note

• Date: 01 January 2009

1-2009 NEWS & A NALYSIS 39 ELR 10005

E D I T O R S ’ N O T E

The January 2009 issue of ELR News & Analysis is a special issue in two ways: specialized content on the occasion

of a new President and Congress and a redesigned look that ref‌lects fundamental structural changes to the magazine

moving forward.

This issue is devoted to providing information and advice to the Obama Administration and the 111th Congress on

environmental law and policy. We identif‌ied four areas of environmental policy where we thought signif‌icant progress

could be made in the next four years: climate change; chemical regulation; endangered species; and ocean policy.

We invited authors who represent industry, nonprof‌its, and academia to write Articles on these four topics. In some

instances, the authors chose to work together to produce one Article, while in others they submitted separate pieces.

The result, we hope you will agree, represents a set of cohesive perspectives that illustrate the many common agree-

ments people of all political persuasions share on these topics. We are hopeful that a new era of fundamental progress

on environmental issues is beginning as we seek to revamp our existing laws and/or launch the second generation of

environmental law and policy.

We also invited a bipartisan collection of present and past government agency heads as well as sitting governors and

leaders from companies, environmental groups, think tanks, and academia to provide short pieces of fewer than 1,500

words. Their assignment was to provide a free-form perspective about the issues they thought would be most useful to

the incoming members of Congress and the administration. The resulting Comments represent a cross section of views

from across the environmental and political spectrum.

As ELR enters its 39th year of publication, we also felt it was time to refresh News & Analysis to ref‌lect the changed

times. News & Analysis remains our cornerstone, a bridge between academia and policy where we try to bring the best

ideas from all sectors to the forefront for discussion and debate. Moving forward, News & Analysis will contain both our

signature Articles as well as the reintroduction of Comments, which are shorter pieces that are less heavily referenced.

We will add columns in future editions covering developments in the various sectors of environmental law and policy

as well as Dialogues, which are discussions of key topics. We will also include a graphic in each issue that visually

communicates information central to environmental law and policy.

This year we are also redesigning the ELR website to become a more user-friendly, centralized portal for environ-

mental law and policy research. ELR News & Analysis is the most-often cited environmental law journal, and we aim

to make our website the most useful website in the f‌ield as well.

We hope you enjoy this issue of News & Analysis and will share any thoughts, suggestions, and constructive criticism

with us by contacting Scott Schang at schang@eli.org or 202-939-3865.

The Editors