Bringing the idea of the environment to law: a comparative study of early environmental law textbooks

Abstract From 1948 to 1972 the idea of the environment gained solidity within the sciences and in global politics, as a thing or a concept, which spoke of a need to save humanity from the harms it was inflicting on the natural world. As historians Warde, Robin and Sörlin explain, the idea brought about a revolution in the sciences, casting scientists as environmental problem solvers, fundamentally changing the way they worked. In this paper we connect law and lawyers to this history. We ask, did lawyers contribute new meanings to the idea of the environment when they first presented laws and parts of legal practice as ‘environmental’? Were they mere translators of the scientists’ ideas? And did they envisage the emergence of new environmental legal experts, who might change legal culture? We examine the early environmental law textbooks in five countries (Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand and the US) and devise ideal types to explain the associations, values and choices which underpinned their presentation of the ideas of ‘the environment’, ‘environmental law’ and ‘environmental law expert’. We consider that these types are useful conceptual tools which raise ongoing questions about the relationship between environmental law and its broader context.