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Environmental Law and Policy: A Coursebook on Nature Law and Socierty
The new edition of this popular casebook by Plater, Abrams, Goldfarb and Graham, adds Robert L. Graham, senior environmental partner and Chair of the Environmental Department of the Chicago law firm Jenner & Block. Graham brings to the book his experience and expertise representing industrial clients over two decades of practice.
Changes in this edition include, among other things:
Changes in this edition include, among other things:
1) A Toxic Torts chapter providing a fascinating integration of tort and public law materials from the Woburn toxics case chronicled in Jonathan Harr's bestseller A Civil Action;
2) Materials on "Brownfields," the re-development of contaminated sites, one of the most active areas of modern environmental practice;
3) A Statutory Capsule Appendix, providing brief functional descriptions of the state and federal statutes most active in environmental practice, and an inventory with citations of the most important international Conventions and Treaties, supplementing the book's pioneering annotated Glossary of Acronyms and Abbreviations.
Hardcover
First published December 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 16, 2025
EDUCATORS BEWARE. (THE SIXTH EDITION)
Book is extremely poorly written. It's plain blabby. The information is in there, just clouded behind meaninglessly cluttered text that could be so, so much more straightforward. Nothing I could say is as damaging as the text itself. I have included some awful quotes from the text:
"NEPA2 is a statute that provokes a wide diversity of reactions. To some, it is a paper
tiger, of awesome but toothless aspect. To others, it is a ringing statutory declaration of environmental protection and rational human governance that sets a precedent of international significance. To some it is an unproductive attempt to intrude on productive public-private enterprises. To others, it is a legislative accident (whether fortunate or unfortunate) that was created and continues to evolve by happenstance."
"The ecosystem hit by the Exxon-Valdez spill was extraordinarily rich. Afected species included herring, black cod, cutthroat trout, dolly varden, shark, halibut, rock fish, shell fish, fin fish, several species of salmon, sea otters, fur seals, steller’s sea lions, harbor porpoises, dall porpoises, killer whales, humpback whales, minke whales, fin whales, blue whales, gray whales, deer, fox, coy-otes, black bears, brown bears, bald eagles, several species of gulls, hundreds of thou-sands of sea birds (such as kittiwakes, puffins, hawks, guillemots, murres, murrelets, loons, grebes, and diving ducks), dungeness crabs, pot shrimp, trawl shrimp — and these were just the upper layers of the ecological pyramid. The waters and wildlife of the Gulf of Alaska were among the most fertile coastal communities on earth, built upon a confluence of ocean currents rich in microorganisms, zooplankton, and phytoplankton. "
Cool information! Put it in a footnote or link it, I don't care. Also, notice the repetitious phrasing of the first and last sentence? It's like it was written by AI with the prompt to fluff the text out as much as possible.
This was an awful reading experience. I hated every moment of it. All the actual information is valuable and it's obviously extremely well researched, but it fails to effectively communicate those findings to the reader. I love the subject, I appreciate the effort put into synthesising information, but the text's end result is nearly as great of a trajedy as the oil spill mentioned above.
Book is extremely poorly written. It's plain blabby. The information is in there, just clouded behind meaninglessly cluttered text that could be so, so much more straightforward. Nothing I could say is as damaging as the text itself. I have included some awful quotes from the text:
"NEPA2 is a statute that provokes a wide diversity of reactions. To some, it is a paper
tiger, of awesome but toothless aspect. To others, it is a ringing statutory declaration of environmental protection and rational human governance that sets a precedent of international significance. To some it is an unproductive attempt to intrude on productive public-private enterprises. To others, it is a legislative accident (whether fortunate or unfortunate) that was created and continues to evolve by happenstance."
"The ecosystem hit by the Exxon-Valdez spill was extraordinarily rich. Afected species included herring, black cod, cutthroat trout, dolly varden, shark, halibut, rock fish, shell fish, fin fish, several species of salmon, sea otters, fur seals, steller’s sea lions, harbor porpoises, dall porpoises, killer whales, humpback whales, minke whales, fin whales, blue whales, gray whales, deer, fox, coy-otes, black bears, brown bears, bald eagles, several species of gulls, hundreds of thou-sands of sea birds (such as kittiwakes, puffins, hawks, guillemots, murres, murrelets, loons, grebes, and diving ducks), dungeness crabs, pot shrimp, trawl shrimp — and these were just the upper layers of the ecological pyramid. The waters and wildlife of the Gulf of Alaska were among the most fertile coastal communities on earth, built upon a confluence of ocean currents rich in microorganisms, zooplankton, and phytoplankton. "
Cool information! Put it in a footnote or link it, I don't care. Also, notice the repetitious phrasing of the first and last sentence? It's like it was written by AI with the prompt to fluff the text out as much as possible.
This was an awful reading experience. I hated every moment of it. All the actual information is valuable and it's obviously extremely well researched, but it fails to effectively communicate those findings to the reader. I love the subject, I appreciate the effort put into synthesising information, but the text's end result is nearly as great of a trajedy as the oil spill mentioned above.
Displaying 1 of 1 review