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[A guest book review from Geoffrey Wandesforde-Smith:] In the newest addition to the Studies in American Politics series from Princeton University Press, David Vogel in California Greenin’: How the Golden State Became an Environmental Leader  (Princeton UP, 2018) asks how it is that California has had such success in protecting its environment and has become a world leader in making and implementing environmental policy and law. Vogel sketches boldly on a large canvas: This book describes what is in many respects a remarkable success story. It demonstrates how a state government has been able to overcome substantial obstacles and enact a wide range of regulations that have made measurable - though admittedly uneven – progress in protecting its environment and improving the quality of life of its residents. Although California has often seemed on the verge of ecological (as well as economic) catastrophe, it has proven remarkably resilient. The state’s ability to remain the most importan...

Peter Reich recently posted an English-language abstract for his "Water Rights in the Mexican Supreme Court during the Postrevolutionary Era: 1918-1946" : This book chapter analyzes the Supreme Court of Mexico’s development of a “national waters” jurisprudence after the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution through judicial review of amparo cases (challenges to official action). Although the Constitution of 1917 generally defined bodies of water within the country’s boundaries as property of the nation, the Court had to apply this provision to specific disputes between state or local bureaucrats and particular landholders for access control. Competition over springs, storm water, groundwater, drinking water, and infrastructure, as well as problems unique to communal resource ownership and petroleum exploitation, raised questions about how much the government could limit individual uses on behalf of the public. The author concludes that despite the dramatic ideological conflicts of the...

Last June we held a conference at TAU Law to explore the history of commons thought:  The Tragedy of the Commons at 50: Context, Precedents, and Afterlife . I'm happy to report that the papers have now been published in the latest issue of Theoretical Inquiries in Law , edited by Carol Rose and myself,  available here . I'll post more on the individual articles later; in the meantime here's the table of contents (the issue also has a couple of additional unrelated articles not listed below): The Banality of the Commons: Efficiency Arguments Against Common Ownership Before Hardin Stuart Banner Before the Tragedy of the Commons: Early Modern Economic Considerations of the Public Use of Natural Resources Nathaniel Wolloch Commons and Environmental Regulation in History: The Water Commons Beyond Property and Sovereignty Alice Ingold Cold-War Commons: Tragedy, Critique, and the Future of the Illiberal Problem Space Monica Eppinger The “Commons” Discourse on Marine Fisheries Reso...

“Roast Yard no. 2” in Copper Cliff (c. 1903), providing a good idea of the damage the heap roasting inflicted on the local environment (City of Greater Sudbury Heritage Images, Copper Cliff Museum Collection, CC0115) Mark Kuhlberg and Scott Miller recently published "'Protection to the Sulphur-Smoke Tort-feasors': The Tragedy of Pollution in Sudbury, Ontario, the World’s Nickel Capital, 1884–1927" in the Canadian Historical Review . First, the abstract: While there are many tales of mining companies polluting the Canadian communities in which they have operated, Sudbury’s early history stands out. It is arguably the most extreme example of an industry dictating to government how the latter dealt with the local pollution problem–in this case, sulphur dioxide emissions. The capstone achievement was the creation of an extrajudicial solution to the problem that permanently suspended the legal rights of residents seeking redress for their grievances. Moreover, the Ontario...

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...