CFP ASEH 2014, Implementing Environmental Law

[karenhoffm]

Dear Colleagues, 

I am seeking participants on the panel described below for the annual conference of the ASEH, which will take place March 12-16, 2014, in San Francisco, CA. If you would like to submit an abstract, please send it to me at karen...@gmail.com as soon as possible and no later than Friday, June 28, 2013.

Sincerely,

Karen Hoffman
Assistant Professor
University of Puerto Rico



Implementing U.S. Environmental Law, 1970 to the Present

This panel is focused on the politically and technically complex history of implementing environmental laws in the U.S. between 1970 and the present. U.S. lawmakers created a diverse suite of environmental laws during the 1970s, which reflected a new seriousness about environmental protection, as well as a commitment to making the implementation process more democratic and effective. For example, the requirement of government agencies to allow public participation and the provision for citizen suits in post-1970 environmental law for the first time allowed members of the public other than the entities to be regulated to participate in rulemaking as well as legal review. The panel focuses on what this new commitment to environmental protection and democracy in policy making looked like in practice, and what have been its outcomes. Papers are invited that address this topic. Papers may address any post-1970 environmental law in the U.S., at any level of government. Questions that papers address might include:

· How was the law implemented?

· What new participants entered into the process? What did they do? With what effect? What limits did they encounter, if any? How were those limits constructed?

· What previous participants remained engaged in the process? What did they do and with what effect? What limits did they encounter, if any? How were those limits constructed?

· What relationships between environmental advocates and policy makers formed?

· How were relationships between the private sector entities to be regulated and policy makers reproduced and/or transformed?

· How did the staff of regulatory agencies negotiate the conflicts they inherently found themselves in, between the private sector entities to be regulated and public-interest advocates?

· To what extent did public participation and citizen suits adequately address the inequality between the private sector entities to be regulated and the new nonprofit public-interest sector advocates?

· Were the regulatory agencies able implement the requirements in the law? If so, how? If not, what limits did they encounter? How were those limits constructed?

· Were the intentions of the lawmakers in the law achieved?

· Did the way the laws were implemented change the intentions of the lawmakers?

The divides the panel will cross are between the disparate areas of environmental protection (pollution, pesticides, other toxic substances control, waste disposal, drinking water, land use, endangered species, conservation, etc.), the private sector and the nonprofit public-interest sector, different scales of government, and experts and laypersons.


If you are interested in participating in this panel, please send an abstract of 250 words to karen...@gmail.com as soon as possible and no later than Friday, June 28, 2013.

If you are interested in the panel and your work intersects with it, but your paper falls outside of its parameters in some way (for example, if your paper addresses a different geopolitical entity or period), feel free to get in touch with me to see if we can alter the panel description to accommodate your paper.