Environmental Law (Critical Concepts in Law)

Since at least the latter part of the twentieth century there has been a crescendo of concern for the environment, and environmental law is increasingly recognized as an important component of any meaningful collective response to the harmful consequences—both actual and threatened—of environmental degradation.

Research about and around environmental law flourishes as never before. Moreover, the theoretical framework within which the subject sits has become increasingly sophisticated as the principles and concepts which have emerged especially over the last thirty years or so (such as the ‘precautionary’ and the ‘polluter pays’ principle and the goal of sustainable development) are refined and clarified. This new title in the Routledge Major Works series, Critical Concepts in Law, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of this rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of literature. As well as bringing together the finest work of legal scholarship, this four-volume collection places environmental regulation in a multidisciplinary context and includes vital work from economists, political scientists, philosophers, ethicists, historians and natural scientists to illuminate the many different perspectives which inform and influence law’s response to environmental problems.

The first volume (‘Environmental Law in Context’) assembles work on the difficulties of drawing the borders of the subject to examine and explore the past, present and future of environmental law. The second volume (‘Perspectives on Environmental Problems’) collects the key research from different perspectives on environmental challenges, ranging from economic justifications for regulatory intervention to ethical considerations and modern forms of environmental governance. Volume 3 (‘Law and Environmental Problems’) gathers the most important work on the development and role of law in solving environmental problems. The scholarship assembled in the final volume (‘Regulating Environmental Problems’) covers the different modes of regulating environmental problems. It addresses contentious issues such as the most appropriate level at which to regulate, and the best institutional arrangements in which to implement regulation.

The material contained in the four volumes of Environmental Law covers global themes, crosses jurisdictional borders, captures different theoretical perspectives and elucidates numerous substantive areas of the subject both to provide an intellectual justification of the foundations of environmental law and to stake out the boundaries of this once amorphous topic. It is destined to be valued by scholars and students of environmental law—as well as those working in allied areas—as a vital one-stop research resource.