ELI announces new editions of its fundamental references for environmental practitioners, the Environmental Law Deskbook and the Environmental Statutes Outline. The Deskbook is the leading one-volume, full-text guide to the major environmental statutes — 23 in total, encompassing resource protection, pollution control, and administrative procedure. The Statutes Outline presents in a concise, “plain English” format a description and analysis of all the important provisions of 50 laws, with reference links to the same section of the statutes included in the Deskbook, plus U.S. Code Citations.
The Deskbook and Statutes Outline are ELI’s response to the environmental bar’s request for handy, concise legislative references. The growth of environmental law has been explosive in the three decades since the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act. As a result, most practitioners have become specialists but still need ready access to the full range of environmental statutes. Together, the Outline and Deskbook provide a quick resource to help understand the provisions of a statute and how it operates, backed up by the full text of the major laws for greater detail.
“Environmental law has evolved into two divergent strands, pollution abatement and natural resources,” said ELI President J. William Futrell. “Many in the pollution field have only a hazy conception of the conservation statutes, and many natural resource lawyers only a hazy conception of pollution control. The fact is that both of these strands are two ways of reaching the same goal, environmental protection. It is often a mix of both that achieves the most effective and least costly legal structure for protecting the environment. We won’t make progress in unifying pollution and natural resource law until lawyers can work comfortably with the two diverging strands. And that requires access to the most important statutes in both fields.”
The 988-page Deskbook has the full text of these statutes: Administrative Procedure Act, Judicial Review, Congressional Review, Equal Access to Justice Act, Freedom of Information Act, Government in the Sunshine Act, Clean Air Act, Coastal Zone Management Act, Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation, and Liability Act, Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, Endangered Species Act, Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, Federal Land Policy and Management Act, Federal Water Pollution Control Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Environmental Quality Improvement Act, National Forest Management Act, Oil Pollution Act, Pollution Prevention Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, Toxic Substances Control Act, and the Wilderness Act.
Copies of Environmental Law Deskbook, 6th Edition can be ordered from the Island Press Web site.
Copies of Environmental Statutes Outline can be ordered from the Island Press Web site.