Environmental Law and Policy is a user-friendly, concise, inexpensive treatment of environmental law. Written to be read pleasurably rather than used as a dry reference source, the authors provide a broad conceptual overview of environmental law while also explaining the major statutes and cases. The book is intended for three audiences - students (both graduate and undergraduate) seeking a readable study guide for their environmental law and policy courses; professors who do not use casebooks (relying on their own materials or case studies) but want an integrating text for their courses or want to include conceptual materials on the major legal issues; and practicing lawyers and environmental professionals who want a concise, readable overview of the field.

For the fourth edition, to provide students a deeper understanding of how environmental law works in practice, a new Chapter has been written on Enforcement. A series of problem exercises have been added throughout the book, describing a legal or policy conflict in detail and asking students to identify and assess solutions. The first part of the book provides an engaging discussion of the major themes and issues that cross-cut environmental law. Starting with the first chapter's brief history of environmentalism in America, the second chapter goes on to explore the importance and implications of basic themes that occur in virtually all environmental conflicts, including scientific uncertainty, market failures, problems of scale, public choice theory, etc.

It then presents three dominant perspectives in the field that drive policy development - environmental rights, utilitarianism, and environmental justice. Chapter Three fills in the remaining legal background for understanding environmental protection, reviewing the theory of instrument choice, the basics of administrative law, core concepts in constitutional law (e.g., takings, the commerce clause), and the doctrines associated with how citizen groups shape environmental law (such as standing). Chapter Four examines the practice and policy of monitoring compliance and enforcing the law. The second part of the book examines the substance of environmental law, with separate sections on each of the major statutes. International issues such as ozone depletion and climate change are also addressed.

These chapters build on the themes and conceptual framework laid down in the first part of the text in order to integrate the discussion of individual statutes into a broad portrait of the law. The third part of the book describes natural resources law, discussing endangered species conservation, wetlands protection, water and energy issues. Part four addresses environmental impact statements and the National Environmental Policy Act.