The 1990s produced almost no major new federal environmental statutes.
Evidence
The 1990s are potentially misleading because one change of widespread portent for environmental law’s future was in the form of a nonevent. What was most strikingly missing from the 1990s was the kind of persistent statutory overhauls that had occurred during both the 1970s and 1980s. During each of those two prior decades, hardly any significant area of federal pollution control or natural resource law remained untouched. … The 1990s stand in sharp contrast. Following the passage of the Oil Pollution Act and the Clean Air Act Amendments at the decade’s outset, there were relatively few comparable legislative statutory products. Longballyhooed legislation to reform the Superfund program never passed. Repeated efforts to amend the Clean Water Act or pass long-overdue amendments to antiquated federal mining law met a similar fate. Notwithstanding widespread bipartisan support, Congress could not even pass legislation that would have elevated the EPA to cabinet status; when the 1990s commenced, the enactment of that seemingly benign, symbolic legislation had seemed a virtual certainty. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 663
Categorization
- QUESTION: What did the EPA cabinet bill’s failure indicate about the depth of partisan gridlock? A useful signal of institutional breakdown.
- XREF: connects to: By the mid-1990s consensus environmental legislation had become politically impossible. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 677; Three institutional changes caused the 1990s environmental-lawmaking collapse. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 667
Broader Connections
- By the mid-1990s consensus environmental legislation had become politically impossible.
#corroborates(0.85) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 677 - Three institutional changes caused the 1990s environmental-lawmaking collapse.
#expands(0.78) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 667