Scalia openly embraced bureaucratic delay as a tool to thwart environmental law

Evidence

Writing even before his appointment to the Court, Scalia decried the judiciary’s apparent “long love affair with environmental litigation.” And taking direct issue with Judge Wright, Scalia made quite explicit his view that “it would be a good thing, too” to have policies such as those furthered by federal environmental protection laws get “lost and misdirected in the vast hallways of the federal bureaucracy… . The ability to lose or misdirect laws can be said to be one of the prime engines of social change.” By the end of the decade, the constitutional foundations of environmental law may have been far from eroded, but those foundations were certainly destabilized. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 608

Categorization

• XREF: Institutional design theme — courts vs. bureaucracy — parallels Legal Systems readings on separation of powers. — connects to: 1990s Supreme Court decisions systematically raised barriers to citizen environmental standing — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 596

Broader Connections

• 1990s Supreme Court decisions systematically raised barriers to citizen environmental standing #exemplifies (0.82) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 596