faulker079

The Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law recently published an extended review  by Michael Blumm of Douglas Brinkley's Rightful Heritage:   Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America (HarperCollins, 2016). The abstract: Douglas Brinkley, biographer of Theodore Roosevelt and his environmental legacy, has produced a sequel on his distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). In a comprehensive ecobiography, Brinkley shows in some detail how committed an environmentalist FDR was, protecting federal lands, encouraging state conservation efforts, making wildlife protection a national priority, and dedicating the federal government to soil protection and forest replanting. Although FDR’s romance with federal dams undercuts the assertion somewhat, the Brinkley biography successfully shows that FDR has a legitimate claim to being the foremost of environmental American presidents.

Slate's Issac Chotiner recently interviewed Eliza Griswold on her new book, Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America  (Macmillan, 2018). In the interview (and presumably the book) Griswold displays a strong historical sensibility about the legal-environmental roots of some of America's (and hence the world's) current predicament. An excerpt: Isaac Chotiner: What is it that is “fracturing” America? Eliza Griswold: These days we are hearing so much about this rural/urban divide. What does that really mean? What is the source of disenfranchisement for rural Americans? Much of it stems from natural resources. Rural Americans have paid for the energy appetites of urban Americans for more than a century. I think a lot people in urban America would hear that and say, “Well, the people who are voting for candidates who are less interested in environmental protections are coming from rural America, and the people who are voting the opposite way are coming from ...

[Second and final part of a guest post by Geoffrey Wandesforde-Smith - Part I is here .] The second point to take away from Arch’s book is that when organized whaling became established in early modern Japan, under the watchful eye of domainal lords ( daimyo ), who could decide who had jurisdiction over particular whaling areas, or over bodies of whales either washed up on shore or brought to a particular shore for processing, regulation was a way of dealing with the local problems of particular businesses, and of their interrelationships, and of the ways those businesses could benefit the domain through fee exactions, as a kind of tax-like income for the domain. It was not about ensuring the continued availability of whale meat as a food source. Indeed, when it took hold and expanded during the Tokugawa peace, Japanese whaling was not primarily about food. It was about profit and about ensuring the continued supply of a wide range of whale products. Sutter is eloquent on this point: W...

Today's "This Day in Water History" has this: Judson Harmon, c. 1912 June 11, 1895: First day of tenure of Judson Harmon as U.S. Attorney General. “Harmon issued the most explicit statement of what became known as the American doctrine of absolute sovereignty, that “the rules, principles and precedents of international law impose no liability or obligation upon the United States,” in a case involving a claim by Mexico for damages from diverting the waters of the Rio Grande.” Or, as one source put it: “US Attorney General Judson Harmon tells Mexico that the US will ‘do whatever it pleases’ with water from the Rio Grande.” Commentary: Even for those days, this was a pretty amazing statement.

[Sorry for the continued silence, but thanks to  Geoffrey Wandesforde-Smith for pitching in with this two-part book review!] At the end of May, the New York Times along with other major news outlets around the world reported that a new round of scientific whaling by Japan during the austral summer of 2017-18 yielded a catch of 333 minke whales, but that of this number 122 were pregnant females and 114 were considered immature individuals [1]. The news invited and perhaps stoked outrage, which history shows can be a powerful force shaping environmental law and policy. Japan took the whales pursuant to a scientific research exemption to the moratorium on commercial whaling enacted by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and effective in 1986 [2]. The first research program under which Japan continued whaling in the Antarctic despite and perhaps in defiance of the moratorium, a program known as JARPA-II, was found in a 2014 decision of the International Court of Justice not to meet ...

Erum Sattar recently posted "From the Moors to the New World: Lessons from Dynamic Water Sharing for a Colonial-Era System in the Indus" . The abstract: This project is a close study of the legal and political aspects of management of water resources in semi-arid environments. The British in India laid the foundations of the modern irrigation system in what is now India and Pakistan. In semi-arid environments, the bulk of agriculture relies on irrigation, as it did in Spain under the Moors. We can observe a stark divide in the use of laws and institutions to manage natural resources in different societies, at different times and places. Some societies have managed in a way that achieved prosperity and long-term sustainability. Others have mismanaged so as to create ecological devastation and social stagnation. The Moors of Spain created a vibrant civilization in the Middle Ages that lasted nearly eight hundred years. One of the reasons for the dynamism of their civilization w...

An issue of Theoretical Inquiries in Law on "The Tragedy of the Commons at 50" that I am co-editing should be out in a couple of months, at which time I'll post about it. In the meantime I received this call for papers for a conference on a similar theme. Please contact the organizers if you have any questions. Georgetown University, Washington D.C. October 5-6, 2018 This year marks the 50th anniversary of Garrett Hardin's  The Tragedy of the Commons . In one of the most cited articles of the 20th Century, Hardin provided a stylized and memorable cautionary tale of how self-interested actions can destroy common resources. However, even as Hardin's work gained traction with a broad array of scholars in many fields of study, it also garnered its fair share of criticism. Indeed, while Hardin popularized the notion of the commons, Elinor Ostrom won a Nobel Prize for her rigorous research refuting the core tenets of Hardin's cautionary tale-- namely that open acce...