Curry on Brooks, 'Before Earth Day: The Origins of American Environmental Law, 1945-1970' (book review)

Karl Boyd Brooks’s examination of environmental law in the mid-twentieth century serves to remind us of the widespread popular and bipartisan political consensus for protecting the environment that had coalesced by the time Americans celebrated the first Earth Day in April 1970. Brooks argues that “ordinary people made environmental law” (p. 5), by which he means that citizens identified unacceptable risks to the environment and initiated protests to which lawyers, legislators, regulators, courts, and policymakers were forced to respond. His account identifies and illuminates the key actors, laws, policies, and processes that produced environmental law as a viable field of professional practice as well as a subject included in standard law school curricula.