Bright-line environmental rules would over-regulate harmless acts while missing real harms.

Evidence

Of course, a system of laws could ignore all of these scientific and economic complexities and simply set forth a set of bright line rules based on a fictionalized schema of how the natural environment and the human economy operate. The most likely result, however, would be environmental laws that were unduly burdensome in many significant respects and unduly relaxed in many others, achieving the worst of both worlds. Serious environmental degradation would not be prevented because critical aspects of problems would go unaddressed. And valued human activities would be curtailed for no good reason, at least in terms of achieving environmental protection goals, while other, damaging, activities would go unhindered. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 105

Categorization

• XREF: The case for complexity-driven regulation speaks directly to legal-institutional course themes of rule precision vs. discretion and textualist critique of open-ended standards. — connects to: Regulatory science on dioxin reversed course twice over two decades. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 120; Tough new-source pollution rules can backfire by prolonging dirty existing plants. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 764

Broader Connections

• Tough new-source pollution rules can backfire by prolonging dirty existing plants. #corroborates (0.82) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 764