Restating Environmental Law

Abstract

The American Law Institute's work on Restatements is a monumental legal achievement and has helped bring clarity, consistency and guidance to many fields of U.S. law. ALI has not, however, ever undertaken a major project or Restatement on U.S. environmental or natural resource law. This article describes why U.S. environmental law provides a rich area for ALI to tackle, and it answers preliminary objections that ALI is not well suited for this particular challenge or that U.S. environmental law is a poor candidate for a Restatement or a Statement of Principles.

We also describe an informal effort underway by a work group of nearly fifty ALI members to delineate workable environmental law projects that ALI could pursue, and we outline possible fruitful approaches that ALI could use to craft a Restatement or a Project on Principles of U.S. Environmental Law.

Keywords: environmental, law, natural resources, energy, American Law Institute, ALI, Restatement, Project, Principles

JEL Classification: K2, K32