Environmental law includes natural resources law far broader than 1970s pollution regimes

Evidence

The term “environmental law” came into common usage only in the 1970s, mostly in reference to the laws then being enacted for the purpose of regulating pollution or waste disposal activities. The actual field of environmental law, however, extends more broadly than the pollution control laws that triggered environmental law’s formal naming. As described in chapter 4, modern environmental law seemed to many in the 1970s to be a “movement without a history,” but actually its historical pedigree was quite extensive. Not only did a smattering of federal, state, and local air, noise, and water pollution laws exist before 1970, but the nation’s natural resources laws had played a central role in the founding, expansion, and industrialization of the country. These natural resources laws are a necessary and significant aspect of what constitutes environmental law in the United States today. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 777

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the full scope of environmental law as spanning both pollution control and natural resources law, correcting the narrower common usage.
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: 1970s resource laws shifted federal oversight of western public lands toward conservation. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 428; Environmentalism transformed the content of a dozen unrelated fields of American law — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 28; Land-use problems resisted the technological fixes that made pollution law politically feasible — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 983

Broader Connections

• Environmentalism transformed the content of a dozen unrelated fields of American law #expands (0.72) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 28
• Land-use problems resisted the technological fixes that made pollution law politically feasible #expands (0.72) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 983