Freedomlaw.com Environmental Law Page

|| Regulatory & Policy Links || Congress Encourages Environmental Lawsuits || Primary & Secondary Environmental Law & Research Links || Industry Organizations || Law Schools

European Environmental Law

Euro Chemicals Report

EnviroDates

Eco-logic on-line

Jenner & Block Environmental Law Department

QUILT OR QUILTS: DO THE NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS SPEAK FOR THE GRASSROOTS ENVIRONMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS

PERC specializes in free-market environmental solutions

Environmental Defense Fund (one of the best ways to protect the environment is to give people the information they need to identify chemical hazards)

HAZARDOUS MATERIALS INDEMNIFICATION AGREEMENT

Alliance for America: A coalition of grassroot organizations concerned with protecting the constitution, property rights, humans, and the environment.

Environmental Information Research Service
United States Environmental Law at a Glance
Environmental Treaties and Resource Indicators (ENTRI)
Environmental LawLinks
Endangered Species Program: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

The Demise of Environmentalism in America
FOCUS ON THE LAW

From a practitioner's standpoint, lawyers who practice in the field have created some of the most useful sites. A good example is www.Envinfo.com, a collection of environmental law information resources created by the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.

Boston lawyer David S. Blackmar created the rich and wide-ranging site, Environmental Law Net, where a highlight is the legal information library.
GOVERNMENT

Environmental Protection Agency • Enviromapper is sort of a road map for the environment. • Enviro$en$e is an attempt to provide a single repository for information and databases relating to pollution prevention, compliance assurance, and enforcement.

The U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Department of Agriculture U.S. Department of Energy With more than 700 employees, the U.S. Department of Justice, Environment and Natural Resources Division describes itself as "the nation's environmental lawyer."

LAWS AND TREATIES

For the full text of laws, treaties or other original sources of environmental law, the place to start is the Pace Virtual Environmental Law Library. The site also provides access to the "Pace Environmental Law Review" and the "Journal of the Pace Center for Environmental Legal Studies."

Environmental Treaties and Resource Indicators allows you to query various databases in order to determine specific information about environmental treaties.

The Right-to-Know Network provides free access to numerous databases, text files, and conferences on the environment, housing, and sustainable development.

Property Rights Research.org

Ozone and Objectivity

Research Guide To Access Environmental Law Via the Internet

The Ultimate Resource II by Nobel Laureate, and late libertarian hero, Julian Simon

Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy Online Journal

Sustainable Sources

Earth Changes TV

Oakland, Calif., lawyer Roger Beers maintains the Environmental Litigation Files, featuring his many articles on a range of environmental law topics, including attorneys' fees, biological resources, discovery in environmental litigation, procedural obstacles, solid waste disposal, workplace exposure, and more.

Lawrence P. Schnapf, author of "Environmental Liability: Managing Environmental Risk in Corporate and Real Estate Transactions and Brownfield Redevelopment," published by Lexis Law Publishing, hosts Schnapf Environmental Law Information Resource Center. Focused on New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, it covers federal and other state issues as well.

LEGAL ADVOCACY

Legal advocacy has long been a central focus of groups devoted to protecting the environment, as they have taken their battles to the courtroom and the legislature. Several groups devoted to legal advocacy have established sites on the Internet. Environmental Defense is a non-profit organization that links science, economics and law to address environmental issues.

The wide-ranging and comprehensive site of Greenpeace International reflects its position as the epicenter of international environmental activism.

The site of the Natural Resources Defense Council offers a rich array of informative and practical materials. A non-profit, environmental law firm in Washington, D.C., the Center for International Environmental Law focuses on international and comparative environmental law and policy. Earth Day 1998 was the launch date for the site of Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund (formerly known as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund). The Environmental Law Institute is home to the "Environmental Law Reporter"

Congress Encourages Environmental Lawsuits

Over the past 20 years, Congress has given environmental activists, acting as "private attorneys general," the legal standing to seek broad injunctions and heavy civil penalties in federal courts against alleged polluters, according to legal experts. It has also given them standing to use the courts to force regulatory agencies to write and enforce unworkable rules mandated by Congress.

Such "citizen suits" seeking to enforce public policies have put the courts in the position of micromanaging regulatory agencies, says former U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh. Some attorneys believe this is unconstitutional, since Congress has the duty to oversee the execution of the laws by Executive branch agencies.

For instance, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 required the Environmental Protection Agency to write minimum standards for state vehicle inspection and maintenance programs within 12 months.

Proposed regulations must be published in the Federal Register, revised after a comment period, cleared by the Office of Management and Budget and then printed in final form.
The EPA did not meet this unrealistic deadline, and was promptly sued by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental special-interest group.
As a result, a federal judge set the timetable for writing the regulations, told the EPA how to allocate its personnel and funds and supervised the process.

Other environmental statutes -- such as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act and the Solid Waste Disposal Act -- include similar deadlines for regulatory action. And since any private group or local government can sue in any federal court, the EPA and other agencies are parties to hundreds of suits.

Researchers suggest that Congress uses citizen suits to expand the role of the courts in enforcing environmental laws because it distrusts regulatory agencies and because it doesn't want to use its limited time and personnel in oversight and investigative hearings.

Source: James T. Blanch et al., "Citizen Suits and Qui Tam Actions: Private Enforcement of Public Policy," 1996, National Legal Center for the Public Interest, 1000 16th Street, NW, Suite 301, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 296-1683.