Template talk:Environmental law

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I have revised the template to reflect the pollution control/resource management areas of environmental law. This is a good taxonomy that has served generations of environmental law students. Re pollution, I have termed the topic "pollution control and remediation," which covers both emissions controls (e.g., air under the Clean Air Act, NPDES permitting under the Clean Water Act) and remediation (e.g., CERCLA). The current subcategories are open to revision - air and water (which link to the newly-created air quality law and water quality law pages) should be fairly non-controversial. I am not sure I am satisfied with the current breakdown of "earth" pollution control - waste and hazardous chemicals. These are harder to classify. I also included Environmental Impact Review here because I see a similarity between the focus on externalities of activity in the pollution control, and the externalities of a particular project in the environmental review. With respect to the resource conservation and management topic, be advised I based the taxonomy on that of the Thomson West Nutshell on Modern Public Land Law (identifying Water, Hardrock Minerals, Leasable Minerals, Timber, Grass(Range), Wildlife, Recreation and Preservation resources). This taxonomy requires the creation of a number of sub-pages - e.g., air quality law, water quality law, hazardous waste law, etc., which I am in the process of adding and which I believe will function very well.

With respect to the previous version of the template, this has required removal of the previous links, which I believe were far too specific and not adequately law-related. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ado2102 (talk • contribs) 19:55, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Added two additional categories: Planning, Land Use and Infrastructure and Related Topics.Ado2102 (talk) 21:51, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

This should be nominated for deletion
Now that nearly all bluelinks have been removed in the interests of "good taxonomy", this template has ceased to be a navigation template since it offers nothing much to navigate to. The sprinkling of specific topics it does link are mostly just stubs. It should therefore be nominated for deletion. --Epipelagic (talk) 21:12, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Would Land law be Land use law?
Would Land law be Land use law? 99.181.155.142 (talk) 04:47, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Template cleanup: too far?
For purposes of documentation, here's a copy of the template just prior to the significant revisions (mostly deletions) recently made. I agree that the template had gotten rather large & unwieldy. However, in my opinion, the trimming has gone too far. Other perspectives? Thanks, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 11:03, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree it was better before. have cleaned up some of the excessive styling, but the old version was better. Frietjes (talk) 16:40, 28 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the style conformity Frietjes, I got carried away. Learned a little about CSS at least. And got votre attention. As for the content, deletions were necessary, the thing was a mess. Let's discuss putting things back together in more orderly fashion. Here's the comparison I'm working with: [comparison]. I'm going to address all of the content that is currently missing, and then I'm going to put things where I think they ought to be.


 * Energy law is far bigger than just pollution control. It's a very strongly related topic and should go high in that section (maybe even first).
 * Cleantech law is a stub which says nothing at all about actual legal standards, and I do not believe it is ready to be on the list. If you disagree add it to related so it might attract more people for further editing.
 * Drainage law is a tough one. It is actually a funky little corner of real property and tort law, as it was developed as part of the common law to deal with problems before municipal drainage was a thing. It is not an environmental or natural resources law topic in my opinion. It could be a related topic but my thinking was it made more sense to be put elsewhere.
 * Illegal logging, illegal fishing, and poaching should all stay off. They are or very well should be subsumed by Fisheries, Forestry, and Game law. Same way you don't need Waste management plus Illegal dumping, or Water quality plus Water pollution.
 * I took out MEA for the same reason as Cleantech, it doesn't seem like a complete article.
 * Removal of law journals was an oversight.
 * I took out Legal pluralism in part of a general digestion of the prior International environmental law material. It's a relevant international law related topic; I don't see it as specifically related to Environmental law any more importantly than a thousand other legal concepts that aren't listed, so I took it down.

And I added the lists - particularly the treaties - because they are excellently, excellently done, and deserve highlighting.

All other edits were renaming or style things, not deletions. As for it being "better before," that strikes me as resistance to change talking. It's better now, it will be even better later. Cheers.

Ado2102 (talk) 19:41, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Notes on older revisions:


 * Moved "Ocean" to related topics and changed it to "Law of the sea", because it's a link to UNCLOS rather than a separate page on Marine environmental law (which would be a great page to see at some point).


 * Deletion of Property law was an oversight. I replaced it, but in related topics with the other large law topics.


 * I took out Wild law because it appears to be an academic construct and as the article says: it "cannot easily be categorised within traditional legal categories (e.g. substantive, procedural, private or public law). It is perhaps better understood as an approach to human governance, rather than as a branch of law or a collection of related topics." I have added it to related topics.


 * I took out Environmental engineering law because it reads like something off of a consultant website rather than a page about substantive law. I've never met or even heard of an "environmental engineering lawyer." Open to hearing differently.


 * I took out Intergenerational equity for the same reason I took out Legal pluralism. It's an important concept, and relevant, but so are many others so why this particular one?


 * MBI/ecotaxes - these are important things from a policy perspective, and fit into the larger picture, but as tools to achieve mandates within larger legal areas, or as policy alternatives to legal controls. I'd be open to an entire separate section on policy tools if there is content for it. Please comment.


 * Removed polluter pays principle because it is not an area of law. On the other hand, I think it might be really valuable to add - to Environmental law and this Template - a "Core principles" section (or something). Polluter pays, precautionary principle, public trust doctrine, and many others might be gathered there. If so it might start with a caveat that these are not all universally accepted or followed, but nonetheless crop up frequently. Please comment.


 * I removed Environmental protocol because I thought it was already early-linked in the international law section, but I don't object to it going back in at related topics.


 * Given all of the above I took out the Planning, land use, and infrastructure topic heading. I was the one who added it, way back when, but on reconsideration I think all of that is better treated as a set of related topics, and have revised accordingly.

I was also the one who introduced the pollution/natural resources split into this template, which I think works well and is developing acceptably. In the United States - which is the only place I'm really qualified to speak about - there is some debate over what "environmental law" actually constitutes. Clearly, the pollution control and abatement fields qualify. Environmental impact review is also clearly a key component - it is in fact one of the unique contributions of the field to world jurisprudence. Given the massive impact that environmental jurisprudence has had on natural resource law, those fields now overlap so much that they deserve to be treated together, albeit separately for purposes of clarity. (Look at the major casebooks, and the names of the programs and clinics at the top law schools: "environmental and natural resources" is a very common term.) Every introductory environmental law course I have ever seen or heard of tackles the same five things, plus a sixth topic from a choice of a few: environmental review, air quality, water quality, waste management, and remediation, and then either chemicals/pesticides, or species protection. Natural resources law topics are generally covered in a separate class, or as Part II of a year-long class. Since there is no "Natural resources law" wiki page, I added the necessary redirects and it's getting subsumed (I didn't go so far as to rename the page "Environmental and natural resources law" because it's clunky). As in schools, topics that are covered in separate courses are treated as related topics - energy, admin, intlaw, etc. It's not perfect but it works ok for major law schools, so I think it is a good basis for work here.

To the extent that pages necessary to fill out this approach do not currently exist, I have worked on creating them and am now trying to contribute content when I can (e.g., waste management law). Some are still stubs, but they should be kept and improved, because they are so core to this field.

Ado2102 (talk) 22:04, 28 September 2014 (UTC)