A Tale of Two Law Professors

• Author: G. Tracy Mehan III
• Pages: 7-11

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A Tale of Two Law Professors

By G. Tracy Mehan III

The Making of Envi ronmental Law, by Richard J. Lazaru s. The

University of Chicago Press. 318 pages.

Saving Our Environ ment From Washington : How Congress Grabs

Power, Shirks Respo nsibility, and Shor tchanges the People, by

David Schoenbrod. Yale University Press. 296 pages.

From the September/ October 2005 issue of The

Environmental For um.

The years since the rst Earth Day were,

depending on your perspective, the

best of times or the worst of times. Or

maybe both, as the early years showed. Presi-

dent Nixon established the Environmental

Protection Agency and signed a number of

basic laws ushering in the new era. Yet he very

quickly concluded that his cabinet should “get

o the environmental kick.”

Love it or hate it, Amer ican envir onmen-

tal la w has tra nsformed the le gal sy stem,

the ec onomy, and s ociety genera lly. “e

centra l conservative truth is that it is cul-

ture, not p olitics , t hat de termines the suc-

cess of a society. e centr al l iberal trut h is

that politics can change a culture and sav e it

from itself.” S o said the late Senator Dan iel

Patrick Moynihan in 1986. His obser vation

cert ainly applie s to nat ure resources a nd

environ mental cons ervat ion over t he past

few decades .

e future is not preordained, and t he

American people will decide, going forward,