The Limits of Law
The Limits of Law
This book examines the systematic constraints on US law enforcement agencies' efforts to regulate business behaviour. It looks specifically at the postwar development of laws regulating water pollution and at the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to enforce them. The discussion traces the factors leading to legal change and analyses the ways in which the impacts of environmental laws vary from their stated purposes and goals, even under relatively favourable conditions for their enforcement. It shows how legal processes and social relations mutually constrain and shape one another as the state struggles to manage often contradictory responsibilities, in this case to encourage both economic growth and environmental welfare.
- Important 'green' issue - state regulation of pollution
- American case studies but the theory, general priniciples and problems are of worldwide concern
Reviews & endorsements
'an illuminating work for anyone concerned with the state and environmental regulation.' Political Studies
'The Limits of Law provides a well-researched, concise history of the evolution of attempts to reduce industrial pollution of US waterways from 1948 through to the 1980s.' Lettie McSpadden Wenner, American Journal of Sociology
Product details
October 1993Paperback
9780521448819
384 pages
229 × 152 × 22 mm
0.56kg
6 b/w illus. 4 tables
Available
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1. The social production of business offenses
- 2. Bringing the law back in: an integrated approach
- 3. The politics of water: pollution policies to 1970
- 4. Contradiction and change: environmental consciousness and the mobilization of law
- 5. Legislating clean water: changing conceptions of environmental rights
- 6. Controls and constraints: from law to regulation
- 7. Enforcement: the social production of environmental offenses
- Conclusions.
