Book review: William Wilson, Making Environmental Laws Work: Law and Policy in the UK and USA (Hart Publishing, Oxford: 1999) £25, ISBN 1-901362-79-5
✍ Scribed by Malvina Snape
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1999
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 27 KB
- Volume
- 11
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1067-6058
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Let's face it ± many environmental law publications tend to be very precise but deathly dull. Articles and books are full of legislative detail and technical points of law rather than any discussion of how environmental law integrates with mainstream political and legal institutions. This is not entirely the fault of the writers themselves and is mainly due to the sheer mass of material that needs to be covered accurately and comprehensively. There is simply no room for broader discussion. William Wilson's book, Making Environmental Laws Work, is a wonderful departure from this colourlessness. It is an enthusiastic, spirited and highly individualistic trek through public environmental law institutions in the United Kingdom, United States and (of all places!) Russia. Wilson is a solicitor with the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions and the book is based on his travels in the United States on a Harkness Fellowship. His viewpoint is of a lawyer working inside government, and thus it is a fundamentally different perspective from the distanced textbook writer.