Words from the first editor in chief.

AuthorReynolds, Ann Morgenstern
PositionTRIBUTE

Congratulations, Environmental Law. I remember your uncertain beginning. When I started law school in 1967, the school was in transition. It was in the process of applying for accreditation by the American Bar Association, which would enable it to grow from a state oriented school to a national one and it was adding a day program.

By my second year, it was recognized that a law review also needed to be part of the plan. The primary purpose was to provide a forum for student writing. Dean Wren insisted that the emphasis would be the environment. He knew the subject would give the law review a unique focus. There were several meetings about the meaning and scope of the journal, but Dean Wren continued to insist on the name. I wish I had a better understanding of why he chose the environment; I know he enjoyed the beauty of the Northwest and felt we had something special we needed to preserve.

We hoped to get a prominent person who had shown an interest in the environment to write an article for the first issue. Our faculty advisor, Bill Williamson contacted Justice William O. Douglas. Although Justice Douglas replied favorably to our request, we didn't hear from him after that and we began to feel very uneasy. However, those were the days when Justice Douglas liked to disappear into the forests of the Northwest where he couldn't be reached. At the very last minute, his contribution arrived and we scrambled to check the accuracy of his citations, which were notoriously unreliable. As part of that process we still were struggling to determine the best format for printing the publication. Our last correction to the first issue was to the title of the first article, which everyone had neglected to read while we all were checking for errors in the body of the material and the footnotes.

Bill Williamson and I, and later with the editorial board after it was chosen, had many discussions about how broadly we could interpret the term "environment" as we struggled to fill each publication...

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