Acid rain and Nordic-Russian cooperation

The recently published book, Greening Europe: Environmental Protection in the Long Twentieth Century – A Handbook, edited by Anna-Katharina Wöbse and Patrick Kupper (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021), has a number of law-related chapters. One is Arne Kaijser's "Combatting 'Acid Rain': Protecting the Common European Sky",  which has an observation on Soviet-Scandinavian relations that takes on additional interest given the news of the day regarding Sweden, Finland, and NATO. The abstract:

In the late 1960s, Scandinavian scientists asserted that the long-range air pollution was causing serious acidification and that emissions all over Europe would have to be diminished. The prevailing view at the time was that air pollution was a local phenomenon best handled by building high smoke-stacks, and the major polluting countries were opposed to spending money on protecting areas far away in other countries. This chapter analyses how the discovery of “acid rain” triggered the first international research projects to confirm long-range air pollution and how, in a second phase, international negotiations involving scientists, policymakers, and diplomats resulted in the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution in 1979. Later on, special protocols were adopted, and the signing nations promised to decrease their emissions in accordance with specific goals. Cold War politics played an interesting role in the negotiations and led to an unexpected alliance between Nordic countries and the Soviet Union.

Effects of acid rain, woods, Jizera Mountains, Czech Republic

Environmentalism Then and Now

I just came across a site by the American Bar Association's Division for Public Education with teaching materials on the history of environmental law. 

It's an eclectic group of resources. For instance the PowerPoint presentation entitled "Environmentalism Then and Now: Is Going Green New? You Be the Judge..." includes slides on a 1681 regulation by William Penn requiring Pennsylvanians to conserve one tree for every five cut down, and a 1739 petition by Benjamin Franklin to the Pennsylvania Assembly to stop waste dumping in Philadelphia harbor.

There's also a unit on the Exxon Valdez spill and ensuing litigation, including Supreme Court briefs.

Exxon Vladez - skimming operation (NOAA)

CFP: Law and Art in the 19th Century: Power in Images

Here's a call for papers for a conference set to take place at the Universita’ di Verona this coming October, on a topic that I think relevant to the intersection of environmental and legal history:

The research team, set up to further study the project Images, Law and Power in the Modern Age, within the framework of the Excellence Project of the Department of Legal Sciences of the University of Verona (2018-2022), is organising a conference on the theme of the artistic representation of law in the 19th century, from the French Revolution to the early twentieth century.

The purpose is to investigate the ways in which, during the nineteenth century, the substantial change in the structural characteristics of the legal phenomenon, and the emergence of an alternative legal experience, corresponded to the replacement - or re-semantization - of the symbols and images traditionally expressed in the law, so that they were more suitable to convey the new concept of the juridical in society.

Details are on the conference website.

Elihu Vedder, Good Legislation mural, Library of Congress Jefferson Building (1896)

French planning law

The French journal Revue d'histoire des Facultés de droit et de la culture juridique recently published a collection of articles on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of "la loi Cornudet", the 1919 French statute on urban planning (known by the name of the legislator who initiated it). The papers are based on those delivered at a conference at the Sorbonne in 2019.

As the French law was roughly contemporaneous with salient American planning and zoning laws and the English Town Planning Acts, it would seem that there should be ample room for fruitful comparative and transnational research. I hope someone takes up the challenge!

Paris development plan of 1934