Some Thoughts on ENRD's Centennial

• Author: Richard Lazarus
• Position: Law faculty of Georgetown University
• Pages: 12-12

Page 12 ❧ THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Copyright © 2010, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, Jan./Feb. 2010

By Richard Lazarus

Some Thoughts on

ENRD’s Centennial

Today, the Department of Jus-

tice’s Environment and Natural

Resources Division is the nation’s larg-

est environmental law f‌irm, but when

it commenced operations on Novem-

ber 16, 1909, the division consisted of

only f‌ive attorneys and three stenogra-

phers. is past November, the unit’s

700 lawyers and support personnel

were joined by hundreds of alumni in

celebrating the division’s enormously

rich history of public service.

e division’s history tells no less a

story than the history of the nation’s

aspirations. e division has been at

the forefront of two of the most sig-

nif‌icant transformations of our na-

tion’s laws — beginning with those

new laws responding to the closing

of the western frontier at the turn of

the 20th century and extending to

those arising from the emergence of

modern environmental law during the

second half of that same century. e

division’s changing name itself hints

at the story: beginning as the Public

Lands Division in 1909, changing to

the Lands Division in 1933, and then

to the Land and Natural Resources

Division in 1965 and, f‌inally, becom-

ing the Environment and Natural Re-

sources Division in 1990.

e attorney general’s 1910 an-

nual report describes why a Public

Lands Division was necessary: “For

the purpose of properly attending to

the enormous and increasing volumes

of business relating to the public lands

of the United States and of Indian af-

fairs.” e nation had decided to dra-

matically transform its laws relating to

the federally owned lands from stat-

utes primarily designed to settle the

nation as quickly as possible by turn-

ing over ownership of public lands

to private parties to acts that would

instead retain federal ownership and

manage public lands and their natural

resource wealth for the benef‌it of the

entire nation.

e reason for the name change in

1933 to the Lands Division is no less

related to historical events of that time.

In the wake of the Great Depression,

the federal government was once again

redef‌ining itself as the newly elected

president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

sought to rescue the nation’s economy.

e impact on the division’s work was

dramatic and wholly

reversed 19th century

policy. e federal

government was now

not just declining to

sell public lands, but

af‌f‌irmatively buying

lands. e New Deal

depended on massive acquisitions to

launch public works projects across

the nation.

By 1937, the division was acquir-

ing eight million acres per year, for

government buildings, post of‌f‌ices,

veterans hospitals, national parks, ir-

rigation and reclamation projects, and

dams. In Pearl Harbor’s aftermath, the

division litigated 18,000 cases for the

acquisition of 20 million acres (the

size of Massachusetts, Delaware, Con-

necticut, Rhode Island, and most of

New Jersey) for airports, naval bases,

and bombing f‌ields in support of the

war ef‌fort. e division’s work now ex-

tended far beyond “Public Lands” to

include “Lands” more generally.

e name change to Land and

Natural Resources Division occurred

in 1965 with the dawning of mod-

ern environmental law. At the time,

Congress had yet to enact any of the

modern pollution control laws. But

the division’s responsibilities were al-

ready shifting in response to the pub-

lic’s increasing desire to protect natu-

ral resources and to reduce industrial

air and water pollution. at is why

then-Assistant Attorney General Ed-

win Wiesl sought permission from the

attorney general for the name change.

Five years before EPA was founded, it

was clear where the division’s future

mission lay.

e change to its current formula-

tion, Environment and Natural Re-

sources, is symbolically signif‌icant in

two respects. First, it underscores the

extent of the division’s evolution by

eliminating the term “Lands,” which

had been the only word shared by all

prior names. e greater signif‌icance

of the change, however, lies, of course,

in the addition of the term “Environ-

ment.” Environment serves as a ready

reminder to those who work within

the division of the

important values of

green thinking un-

derlying the laws that

def‌ine the division’s

central mission.

e division can be

proud of the tremen-

dous and varying roles it has played

during the past 100 years of the na-

tion’s history. Whether resulting from

the closing of the American frontier,

the Great Depression, world war, or

the emergence of modern environ-

mental law, the division has met the

challenges that inevitably accompany

the necessary changes in the nation’s

laws. e next 100 will be no less

challenging. Climate change may ul-

timately require yet another dramatic

shift of our nation’s laws respecting the

environment and natural resources.

And, if it does, we can expect that the

Environment and Natural Resources

Division will once again serve as the

steward for that transformation, de-

fending the legitimacy of the necessary

changes against legal challenge and en-

forcing the new law’s strict terms.

Richard Lazarus is on the la w faculty of

Georgetown University. He can be reached at

lazarusr@law.georgetown.edu.

I  C

From the closing of the

ontier to new ontiers

in environmenta l

protection