Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Title
Pace Environmental Law Review
Publication Date
Spring 2015
ISSN
0738-6206
Page Number
382
Keywords
environmental law, climate change, private governance, emissions reduction
Disciplines
Environmental Law | Law
Abstract
The title of this Symposium, Re-conceptualizing the Future of Environmental Law, accurately captures the challenge facing environmental law scholars and policymakers in 2015. The success of environmental law in the future will not arise from doubling down on the approaches developed over the last 50 years. Instead, it will arise from our willingness to learn from the past without being bound by the conceptual frameworks that dominated the early development of the field.
In particular, a successful future for environmental law is more likely to emerge if we acknowledge that the environmental problems, policy plasticity, and regulatory institutions that shaped the early decades of the field are no longer dominant, and if we develop new responses that reflect the shifts that have occurred on each of these points. I begin by identifying several important shifts in environmental problems, policy plasticity, and institutions. I then explore how new conceptual frameworks--sometimes explicit and sometimes not-are already leading to new responses to some of the most challenging environmental issues.
Recommended Citation
Michael P. Vandenbergh,
Reconceptualizing the Future of Environmental Law: The Role of Private Climate Governance, 32 Pace Environmental Law Review. 382
(2015)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty-publications/1498