1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910781606703321

Autore

Kysar Douglas A

Titolo

Regulating from nowhere [[electronic resource] ] : environmental law and the search for objectivity / / Douglas A. Kysar

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New Haven [Conn.], : Yale University Press, c2010

ISBN

1-283-26086-7

9786613260864

0-300-16330-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (1 online resource (xii, 314 p.))

Disciplina

344.04/6

Soggetti

Environmental law - Philosophy

Environmental law - United States

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Agency and optimality -- Prescription and precaution -- Complexity and catastrophe -- Interests and emergence -- Other states -- Other generations -- Other forms of life -- Ecological rationality -- Environmental constitutionalism.

Sommario/riassunto

Drawing insight from a diverse array of sources - including moral philosophy, political theory, cognitive psychology, ecology, and science and technology studies - Douglas Kysar offers a new theoretical basis for understanding environmental law and policy. He exposes a critical flaw in the dominant policy paradigm of risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis, which asks policymakers to, in essence, "regulate from nowhere." As Kysar shows, such an objectivist stance fails to adequately motivate ethical engagement with the most pressing and challenging aspects of environmental law and policy, which concern how we relate to future generations, foreign nations, and other forms of life. Indeed, world governments struggle to address climate change and other pressing environmental issues in large part because dominant methods of policy analysis obscure the central reasons for acting to ensure environmental sustainability. To compensate for these shortcomings, Kysar first offers a novel defense of the precautionary principle and other commonly misunderstood features of



environmental law and policy. He then concludes by advocating a movement toward environmental constitutionalism in which the ability of life to flourish is always regarded as a luxury we can afford.