Environmental litigation involves the enforcement of environmental policy through the use of the judicial branch of government. There are three typical kinds of court cases involving environmental laws. In the first kind of case, the state or federal government sues industry for not complying with the law, e.g., the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could prosecute a steel plant for violating the terms of its permit to discharge pollutants into a waterway. The remedy in such cases can be either administrative or criminal fines, and in extraordinary cases, criminal prison terms. In these cases the government assumes an environmentally protective posture in court and industry usually defends itself basing its arguments on economic arguments concerning the well-being of the community and the need for employment.
The second modal type of environmental law case occurs when industry sues government, arguing that the enforcement agency has exceeded its authority in making regulations...
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© 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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McSpadden, L.M. (1999). Environmental litigation. In: Environmental Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4494-1_119
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4494-1_119
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