I recently participated in the great Legal Histories of Empire conference that met in Maynooth, Ireland. There were a number of papers on environment-related topics (especially about the oceans), but one that really stood out for me was that of Erin Braatz on nuisance law in colonial Gold Coast (Ghana).
Braatz showed that the largest category of criminal prosecutions in the Gold Coast was for nuisance, and especially sanitary offenses, and suggested a surprising (for me, at least) explanation: the colonial government's desire for forced labor. After the abolition of slavery, colonial rulers and settlers cried out for (cheap) working hands, and sentencing locals to terms of labor for nuisance violations was one way of providing them.
I've often noted before connections labor issues and environmental regulation, but Braatz's research suggests a new (and unsettling) angle.
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.
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| Elihu Vedder, Good Legislation mural, Library of Congress Jefferson Building (1896) |
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!
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| Paris development plan of 1934 |
Reposting from H-Environment:
Dear all,
I am a doctoral candidate at Rutgers University New Brunswick, and I am currently seeking co-panelists for the American Society of Legal History conference to be held in Chicago, Illinois, November 10-12, 2022. The conference welcomes papers dealing with legal history from any time period or geographical area, but is only accepting panel proposals. I am seeking to put together a panel dealing with international environmental law in the 20th century, in the broadest possible sense. My paper specifically will talk about the interplay between international conservation efforts and French national interests in the creation of a "French Antarctic national park" in the subantarctic Kerguelen Islands in 1924.
Here is a link to the ASLH website For more information: https://aslh.confex.com/aslh/2022/cfp.cgi
Panel submissions are due March 18th. I know this is a short turn around but I hope to find interest through this forum. The ASLH is a great organization that offers a helpful forum for discussing a broad range of legal history topics, and is especially supportive of graduate students and early career scholars.
Please feel free to contact me at kms557@history.rutgers.edu if you are interested in joining this panel.
All best,
Katherine Sinclair
Bruno Navez, Remains of vats and boilers at Port-Couvreux, Kerguelen Islands, used for the making of elephant seal oil at the beginning of the XXth century
For the Italian speakers among you (courtesy of the ESCLH blog): The Laboratory of Legal and Economic History at Università degli Studi "Magna Graecia" in Catanzaro will be holding a conference on "The environment between law and economics: a long journey from the Roman world to the contemporary age" on 3-4 December 2021. The program and links for remote participation are below and on the website Storia del diritto medievale e moderno.
I've been participating in a great online series on the historical intersections of economic and environmental thought, organized by Troy Vettese and Julia Nordblad. The organizers write:
One would think that environmental history and economic history would be peas in a pod. After all, central questions in the history of economic thought concern environmental issues such as the early-modern enclosures and the importance of water-power and coal to the industrial revolution. The meanings of ‘the environmental’ and ‘the economic’ have shifted over the centuries, especially as issues were traded between natural philosophy, political economy, and ecology. While much has been written on policy of various kinds, what this workshop is focused on are works that lie at the convergence of environmental, economic, and intellectual history. What for example are the origins and contexts of Spaceship Earth, catastrophe bonds, geo-engineering, externalities, cap-and-trade, and sustainability?
Many of the papers are on topics with significant legal aspects, such as the history of economic thought on emissions trading, Pigouvian taxes, and the like. Stephen Gross's paper for tomorrow is particularly laden with connections to the history of environmental law and regulation.
The schedule for the remaining meetings is below. Registration is for each session separately (links below), and the discussions assume pre-reading of the papers, as the authors do not present them but only respond to comments. Papers are available from Troy Vetesse.
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| Trionfo della morte (1446) (Galleria Regionale di Palazzo Abbatellis) |
Registration ends October 29.
The papers were grouped into three themes: (i) the management of waterways; (ii) the management of land adjacent to waterways; and (iii) the exploitation of water resources.
The central aim of the workshop was to explore the potential and challenges of studying a historical problem from the perspective of different sets of evidence. From this point of view, the conference was a success. The management of water resources was an ideal subject, partly because the effective exploitation of water was essential to both agricultural and urban development in the ancient world. Moreover, the contributions of archaeologists and lawyers combined to lend an insight into the integrated technical and legal strategies that the Romans employed to the challenge of supplying water to the places it was required. In the case of rural communities, for example, irrigation was a central concern; while cities frequently relied upon rainwater collection and aqueducts to provide for their populations. Maintaining the navigability of waterways (both natural and man-made) was also an important task. In all these cases, the construction and maintenance of the necessary infrastructure was facilitated by the Roman legal framework, which provided remedies designed to govern the relationships between the individuals engaged in these tasks.The workshop program is here.
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| Legal historians under the Roman aqueduct near Caesarea, Israel, 2017 |
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| Andaman Islands (Venkatech K) |
| The Banality of the Commons: Efficiency Arguments Against Common Ownership Before Hardin | |
| Stuart Banner |
| Before the Tragedy of the Commons: Early Modern Economic Considerations of the Public Use of Natural Resources | |
| Nathaniel Wolloch |
Commons and Environmental Regulation in History: The Water Commons Beyond Property and Sovereignty
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| Cold-War Commons: Tragedy, Critique, and the Future of the Illiberal Problem Space | |
| Monica Eppinger |
| The “Commons” Discourse on Marine Fisheries Resources: Another Antecedent to Hardin’s “Tragedy” | |
| Harry N. Scheiber |
| Savagery, Civilization, and Property: Theories of Societal Evolution and Commons Theory | |
| David B. Schorr |
| Historicizing Elinor Ostrom: Urban Politics, International Development and Expertise in the U.S. Context (1970-1990) | |
| Fabien Locher |
| Indigenous Peoples, Political Economists and the Tragedy of the Commons | |
| Michel Morin |
| Commons and Cognition | |
| Carol M. Rose |
| Confronting Hardin: Trends and Approaches to the Commons in Historiography | |
| Giacomo Bonan |
| Give Us Back Our Tragedy: Nonrivalry in Intellectual Property Law and Policy | |
| Oren Bracha |
| Re-romanticizing Commons and Community in Israeli Discourse: Social, Economic, and Political Motives | |
| Amnon Lehavi |
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| Garrett Hardin |
CARB convened for the first time in January 1968, following enabling legislation prompted by the chronic, crippling smog that enveloped Southern California, its residents and economy in the 1950’s and `60’s. The Board quickly became a national and international leader in air pollution regulatory strategy and pollution control technologies for stationary and vehicular sources alike. That leadership was reflected in the 1970 Clean Air Act, when Congress granted California–alone among the states–the authority to adopt vehicle emission standards more stringent than those promulgated by the federal government. (Attendees were reminded at the “CARB at 50” conference that this longstanding federal deference to California auto emission standards is due in large part to strong and successful lobbying by then-California Republican Governor Ronald Reagan.)
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The California Air Resources Board has achieved a truly remarkable record of success over the past half century. California’s air quality today is roughly 95% better than it was when the Board first convened in 1968. Air pollution control technologies pioneered by CARB in California have been replicated nationally and internationally. In 2004, CARB enacted the world’s first GHG emission reduction standards for motor vehicles, which was only the start of a multitude of innovative and successful Board regulatory strategies to address the overarching environmental challenge of our time–climate change. And, last but not least, CARB demonstrated that it is a regulator with considerable bite when the occasion requires it–as the Board amply demonstrated in responding to Volkswagen’s fraudulent “gaming” of emissions control systems in the diesel vehicles VW marketed in California and worldwide.For more on Reagan the environmentalist see here.
On Friday, January 19, 2018, the University of California, Davis, will host a major conference commemorating the California Air Resources Board’s 50th anniversary. The conference represents a three-way partnership between UCD School of Law’s California Environmental Law and Policy Center, UCD’s Institute for Transportation Studies and CARB.
Since its creation in 1967, CARB has been a model of environmental stewardship, pollution control innovation and public service. Years before passage of the federal Clean Air Act, CARB pioneered the nation’s first air pollution emission limits and pollution control technologies for motor vehicles—accomplishments that served as a model for the nation and the world. More recently, CARB has led California’s multifaceted strategy to curb the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, again serving as both an inspiration and model for the global community.
The January 19th conference at UC Davis will both celebrate CARB’s past accomplishments and—at least as importantly—identify the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for CARB in the next half century. Featured speakers will include California Governor Jerry Brown, former USEPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and current CARB Chair Mary Nichols. Also on the agenda is a diverse panel of “young visionaries” who will venture predictions on CARB’s future course and priorities.
Registration for the event is now open. You can register here.
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| Nahalal collective village, Israel (c. 1930?) |
The distinctiveness of European from American regulatory cultures or traditions is a matter of longstanding controversy. Two recent books — The Politics of Precaution by David Vogel — and The Reality of Precaution, edited by Jonathan Wiener with several others — have made notable contributions to this debate. Both books argue that regulatory cultures or traditions are incapable of explaining current differences between American and European approaches to precaution, which they define as regulatory stringency. For Wiener, this conclusion derives from the inconsistency of patterns of stringency between the United States and Europe. Vogel argues that while the stringency of current European environmental regulation indeed exceeds that of its U.S. counterpart, the split is unstable and opened relatively recently. In combination, the books aspire to put to rest an entire family of historical-institutional explanations for cross-national regulatory differences in the transatlantic context and beyond.
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| Edwin Chadwick, who brought the Continental precautionary approach to Victorian England |
This essay draws from legal history to argue for an alternative position: legal traditions and their associated administrative-law principles are highly relevant to current transatlantic conflicts over precaution. The paper’s starting point is the distinction between two separate meanings of the precautionary principle, the first prescriptive, and the second permissive. In its prescriptive sense the precautionary principle urges regulators to take stringent mitigation measures in the face of scientifically uncertain risks. In its permissive sense, the principle authorizes the state to regulate when the relevant harms are scientifically uncertain. Conflicts over permissive precaution thus inherently reflect divergent views of the scope of the state’s autonomy in the regulation of risk. These disparate views correspond closely, in turn, with relevant differences between the administrative law traditions respectively associated with Anglo-American common law and Continental civil law.
