I am currently researching the history of water law in the British Empire from the mid-nineteenth century on, and in Mandate Palestine in particular. I am also working on an article on the history of the Society of Comparative Legislation. My book on the origins of the appropriation doctrine in the western US, The Colorado Doctrine: Water Rights, Corporations, and Distributive Justice on the American Frontier, was published by Yale University Press in 2012, and has received good reviews in a number of history and law journals. I also do some writing (in Hebrew) on Israeli environmental law. I have graduate students working on a variety of interesting projects, including the history of environmental law under the League of Nations system, the history of Israeli oil law, and more. I teach courses in environmental law, energy law, and legal history at TAU Law, and currently direct the Berg Institute for Law and History there. I post at the Environment, Law, and History Blog, and welcome guest posts there.
keywords: legal history, monopoly, prior appropriation, property theory, water history
Making ex... more keywords: legal history, monopoly, prior appropriation, property theory, water history
Making extensive use of archival and other primary sources, David Schorr demonstrates that the development of the “appropriation doctrine,” a system of private rights in water, was part of a radical attack on monopoly and corporate power in the arid West. Schorr describes how Colorado miners, irrigators, lawmakers, and judges forged a system of private property in water based on a desire to spread property and its benefits as widely as possible among independent citizens. He demonstrates that ownership was not dictated by concerns for economic efficiency, but by a regard for social justice.
Reviewed in Agricultural History, American Historical Review, Arizona Water Resource, Business History Review, Environmental History, Hastings West-Northwest Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Journal of American History, Pacific Historical Review, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, University of Denver Water Law Review, Water History, Western Historical Quarterly, Western Legal History
Issue of the Hebrew-language history journal זמנים (Zmanim) on environmental history, edited by D... more Issue of the Hebrew-language history journal זמנים (Zmanim) on environmental history, edited by David Schorr and Miri Shefer-Mossensohn.
Volume 19, issue 2 of Theoretical Inquiries in Law, edited by Carol M. Rose and David B. Schorr
... more Volume 19, issue 2 of Theoretical Inquiries in Law, edited by Carol M. Rose and David B. Schorr
Theoretical Inquiries in Law, Volume 10, No. 1 (co-edited with Gideon Parchomovsky)
For pdfs of a... more Theoretical Inquiries in Law, Volume 10, No. 1 (co-edited with Gideon Parchomovsky) For pdfs of all the articles, go to http://eial.tau.ac.il/index.php/til/issue/view/55
Collection of articles (in Hebrew) on Israel's Clean Air Law, co-edited with Oren Perez.
Hukim, v... more Collection of articles (in Hebrew) on Israel's Clean Air Law, co-edited with Oren Perez. Hukim, vol. 7 (2015)
The article explains why proposals for an Israeli Climate Law with national emissions targets are... more The article explains why proposals for an Israeli Climate Law with national emissions targets are a distraction: Such a law is unnecessary, as existing law provides ample authority for any desirable mitigation measures and targets. It is also bound to fail, as the history of Israeli environmental regulation shows that heavy reliance on emissions targets in areas such as air pollution and waste disposal has a long history of failure in reaching environmental goals. What is needed instead are concrete steps to cut emissions in a variety of contexts. A general climate law, even with ambitious targets, will have little effect.
בתקופה האחרונה מקודמות בערוצים שונים הצעות ל"חוק אקלים" ישראלי. החוק אמור לקבוע יעדים לקיצוצים בפליטות של גזי חממה, לדרוש הכנה של תכניות להפחתת פליטות ולהסתגלות לשינויי האקלים, לכונן גופים שייעצו לממשלה בנושא, ועוד.
מאמר קצר זה יבחן את הצעות החוק האלה ויטען שאין כל צורך בחוק כזה. מעבר לכך, הוא יטען גם שחוק אקלים במתכונת המוצעת חסר כל תוחלת. אין בו צורך כי הסמכויות לבצע את הפעולות המוזכרות בהצעות החוק כבר מעוגנות היטב בדין הקיים. חוק זה גם לא יועיל כי הטכניקה של קביעת יעדים בחוק, טכניקה המועדפת על ידי המחוקק הישראלי (מסיבות שתפורטנה), נועדה לכישלון. מעבר לכך, ההיסטוריה מלמדת שעיגון הסדרים סביבתיים בחקיקה ראשית אינו הופך אותם ליציבים יותר או לבעלי סיכויים גבוהים במיוחד להיות מיושמים בפועל.
מה שנדרש מחוק אקלים ישראלי אינו הצגת יעדים כלליים שאינם מחייבים איש באמת, אלא קביעת חובות קונקרטיות ומדידות הניתנות לאכיפה – וכאלה אין בגרסאות השונות של החוק המוצעות כיום, מן הסתם עקב העדר היתכנות פוליטית לחקיקת חוק כזה. נדרשים איסורים, תמריצים, ותיקנון שיחייבו פרטים, ארגונים וגופים ממלכתיים לצמצם את פעילויותיהם המזיקות ולעבור לחברה ולכלכלה דלות-פחמן ומותאמות למציאות האקלימית המתהווה. את מעט ההון הפוליטי שיש לאלה הרוצים להצעיד את ישראל קדימה במישור האקלימי מוטב להוציא על צעדים אופרטיביים גם אם השפעתם תהיה צרה יחסית, ובניצול ההזדמנויות הקיימות בדין כדי לצמצם את הפליטות של גזי החממה שמקורן בישראל, ולהיערך לשינויי האקלים שכבר מתרחשים ולאלה שעוד יבואו. המאמר יציע כמה כיוונים לפעולות משפטיות שיכולות לצמצם את פליטות גזי החממה בישראל בלי צורך בחוק חדש.
Local bylaws were the primary tool for local governments in British-ruled Palestine to exercise t... more Local bylaws were the primary tool for local governments in British-ruled Palestine to exercise their authority, and water was the paradigmatic subject for local legislation. Looking at the diffusion of legal norms in local bylaws in the 1930s and '40s, the article examines the dynamics of law-making in a context characterized by both imperial rule and inter-communal conflict. The article asks two major questions: To what extent did the bylaws adopt legal norms and forms across communal boundaries? And was the legislation passed by local governments as the product of local preferences and initiative, or did it rather reflect the desires of the British rulers? Understanding the processes of legal transplantation at the local level can help shed light on a number of issues. For the history of Mandate Palestine, it can refine our understanding of the degree to which the Arab and Jewish communities, engaged in sustained conflict, nonetheless interacted in the fields of urban infrastructure and local law-making. For imperial environmental history, it provides an opportunity to test theories about water policy as an expression of top-down power. For the legal history of empire, it highlights a level of law-making, located somewhere between imperial imposition and indigenous resistance, that has largely been neglected. And for understanding of legal transplantation or diffusion, it offers a fine-grained case study in the way in which legal norms might move and transform-across jurisdictional, communal, and cultural lines.
This article, written for an issue of Clio@Themis on "Nature as a Norm", examines the water law o... more This article, written for an issue of Clio@Themis on "Nature as a Norm", examines the water law of jurisdictions from across the "common law world" in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period in which increasingly intensive uses of water and watercourses frequently brought conflicts over water into court. An issue that arose in a variety of contexts was the degree to which the rules of English law with regard to water could or should be applied in territories characterized by environmental conditions that often differed radically from those found in England. A legal regime that seemed unremarkable in the home country often seemed a poor fit for the conditions of other, far-off lands, leading to friction between the law and the lived life of the colony and its natural environment. The article explores some of the areas of water law in which courts around the common law world departed from the established rules of the common law in order to make the legal rules more appropriate, as they saw it, to the local environment. They did so consciously, explicitly granting nature normative force. It also looks at other courts and judges, ones that resisted this kind of normative claim, arguing that the law in new environments had to conform to the old common-law rules, regardless of what nature seemed to demand. Perhaps surprisingly, this discourse in far-flung jurisdictions about the potential legal force of local environmental conditions was at the same time a global one: Arguments were made not only about the differences between local and British nature, but also about the similarities between the natures of territories very distant and different from each other. Both types of environmental comparisons were seen to have normative significance.
The ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court in Ata v. Schwartz is best known today as a exposition by... more The ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court in Ata v. Schwartz is best known today as a exposition by an Israeli court of possible remedies in cases of nuisance, suggested by Calabresi and Melamed's seminal article on property rules, liability rules, and inalienability. Yet the case's historical importance extends beyond the boundaries of this narrow issue: The defendant was a legendary company, a symbol of Zionist collectivism, and the lawsuit attacking it was viewed as a sort of selfish provocation against these values. Moreover, the Court's decision, that celebrated individual rights and criticized the economic analysis of law, hid an important element of the decision – the import of economic analysis into Israeli law, in a discussion that had no parallel in the contemporary world. These aspects make Ata v. Schwartz an important episode not only in Israeli tort law, but in the chronicles of the various strands of Israeli liberalism in general, and legal liberalism in particular.
פסק-הדין של בית-המשפט העליון בפרשת אתא נ' שוורץ מוכר היום בעיקר בתור התייחסות של הפסיקה הישראלית בסעדים האפשריים למקרי מטרד שהוצעו במאמרם המכונן של קלברזי ומלמד על כללי קניין, כללי אחריות, ואי-עבירות. אך חשיבותו ההיסטורית של פסק-הדין חורגת מגבולות הסוגיה הצרה הזאת: הנתבעת בפרשה היתה חברה אגדית במשק הישראלי, סמל לקולקטיביזם ציוני, והתביעה נגדה נתפסה בזמנה שסוג של התרסה אנוכית נגד ערכים אלה. יתרה מזו, הכרעתו של בית-המשפט העליון, שהעלתה את זכויות הפרט על נס וביקרה את הניתוח הכלכלי של המשפט, הסוותה יסוד חשוב בפסק-הדין – ייבוא של הניתוח הכלכלי למשפט הישראלי, בדיון שלא היה לו אח ורע בעולם בשנת 1976. היבטים אלה הופכים את אתא נ' שוורץ לפרשה חשובה לא רק בדיני הנזיקין הישראליים אלא בתולדות הליברליזם הישראלי בכלל והליברליזם המשפטי בפרט, על זרמיהם השונים.
This article argues that modern commons theory has been substantially shaped by early modern ways... more This article argues that modern commons theory has been substantially shaped by early modern ways of thinking about the evolution of civilizations. In particular, it has hewed closely to models that gelled in the Enlightenment-era works known as "stadial theory," by authors such as Lord Kames and Adam Smith, and passed down to the twentieth century, to theorists including Garrett Hardin, Harold Demsetz, and Elinor Ostrom. It argues that stadial thinking reached modern commons theorists largely through the disciplines of anthropology and human ecology, paying particular attention to the debate among anthropologists over aboriginal property rights, colonial and international development discourse, and neo-Malthusian conservationism. The effects of stadial theories' influence include a belief among many that private property represents a more advanced stage of civilization than does the commons; and among others a Romantic yearning to return to an Eden of primitive and community-based commons. Thus do deep cultural attitudes, rooted in the speculative thinking of an earlier age, color todayʼs theories — positive and normative — of the commons.
Oxford Handbook of Historical Legal Research (Markus Dubber & Christopher Tomlins, eds.), 2018
keywords: history of environmental law, history of environmental regulation, environmental law, e... more keywords: history of environmental law, history of environmental regulation, environmental law, environmental regulation, legal history, environmental history
Environmental law has no history. This is not to say environmental law has no past; indeed, scholars are beginning to uncover its historical roots. What I mean by having no history is, first, that there is a general feeling, common to legal historians and environmental lawyers (particularly in the United States), that environmental law is something new under the sun. Modern environmental law lacks of connection both to earlier periods and to the great themes and trends of legal history. Environmental law has no history in a second, sense, too; it lacks history as a mode of argument or analysis. In legal cultures in which precedent and history are often what make a winning argument, the unavailability of historical analysis as a mode of legal discourse—as it is, for instance, in constitutional and property law (two fields in which environmental legal disputes are often entangled)—means that environmental values often are forced to retreat in the face of others. For these reasons environmental law needs both heightened historical analysis and a sense of its own historical roots. This essay aims to sketch current, possible, and desirable directions for future research into the history of environmental law. Before doing so, it notes a current scholarly pathology.
This article examines what we can learn about the history of environmental law from art. Looking ... more This article examines what we can learn about the history of environmental law from art. Looking mostly at works of the French Impressionists and poster art, but also at a variety of other sources, it explores how we might use art to better understand the background to historical developments in environmental law, its effects, and its very existence.
The development of the law of riparian rights in the Anglo-American world in the nineteenth centu... more The development of the law of riparian rights in the Anglo-American world in the nineteenth century has been analyzed from several points of view, including economic property theory and Marxian legal history. Transnational aspects of the subject have not been neglected, as some have highlighted the transatlantic framework in which this body of doctrine developed, and others have examined the use of Continental, civil law sources by some of the American jurists responsible for that development. Yet the inter-imperial aspect of this story, in particular the meeting of the laws of the British and French Empires, has gone unremarked.
This paper examines the crossed histories of English common law, French civil law, and American law in the jurisprudence of water rights in Lower Canada/Canada East/Quebec in the mid-nineteenth century, and the influence of this jurisprudence on the developing water law of the British Empire.
This article surveys the water law of Palestine under British rule, identifying the legal norms g... more This article surveys the water law of Palestine under British rule, identifying the legal norms governing the use of water and explaining some of the factors shaping the development of this area of the law. It argues that despite their lack of official lawmaking power, Arabs and Jews succeeded in decisively shaping the course taken by water law in this period. After surveying the Ottoman water law in force when the British took power in 1917, the article examines influential court decisions in a case brought by the Arab residents of the village Artas against government expropriation of water, and explains the significance of this litigation for the subsequent development of Palestine’s water law. It then discusses British initiatives meant to reform water law and subject the country’s water to state control, plans frustrated by the opposition of Zionist groups fearful of increased government regulation. It closes by noting that water law was made in this colonial context neither by imposition from above nor by resistance from below, but by intervention of subject peoples at the highest levels of official lawmaking.
מאמר זה סוקר את דיני המים של ארץ ישראל תחת השלטון הבריטי, מזהה את הנורמות שהסדירו את השימוש במים, ומסביר חלק מהגורמים שהשפיעו על התפתחות דינים אלה. הוא טוען שערבים ויהודים, על אף שלא החזיקו בכוח רשמי לחוקק, הצליחו לעצב את דיני המים בתקופה זו בצורה מכרעת. לאחר סקירה של דיני המים עותמאנים שירשו הבריטים עם כיבוש הארץ בשנת 1917, המאמר בוחן פסקי-דין בפרשה שמקורה בעתירה של תושבי הכפר ארטס נגד הפקעת מים על ידי הממשלה, ומסביר את חשיבות הפרשה להמשך ההתפחות של דיני המים בארץ. לאחר מכן הוא בוחן יוזמות בריטיות לרפורמות בדיני המים ולהכפפת משאבי המים לשליטת המדינה, תוכניות שסוכלו על ידי קבוצות ציוניות שחששו מהתערבות הממשלה. המאמר מסכם בתובנה שדיני המים בהקשר קולוניאלי זה לא נכפו מלמעלה וגם לא נוצרו על ידי התנגדות מלמטה, אלא על ידי התערבותם של עמים הנתונים לשלטון קולוניאלי שהתערבו בדרגים הגבוהים ביותר של עיצוב הדין באימפריה.
The bogeyman of institutions and theories that make a place for community in property law is the ... more The bogeyman of institutions and theories that make a place for community in property law is the "Blackstonian conception" of property, based on Blackstone's famous identification of property with "that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe."
Yet, as anyone who has even skimmed Blackstone's Commentaries quickly realizes, it is clear that the great expositor of the common law did not believe that this absolutist and individualist conception squared with the actual institution of property found in English law. Replete with descriptions and justifications of doctrines that recognized and enforced a complex web of individual and community interests in land and other resources, Blackstone's account seems much closer to the "bundle of rights" approach popularized by the American legal realists than to the "absolute dominion" view associated with his name. Why has exclusive dominion as a model for property, then, come to be associated with Blackstone, of all people?
This Article seeks, first of all, to explain why Blackstone would first characterize property as "sole and despotic dominion," and then go on to illustrate, over several hundred pages, the falsity of this definition. The primary goal of the paper, though, is to examine the ways in which Blackstone was invoked by later jurists as authority for property-law propositions. In particular, the Article examines how Blackstone has been cited by English and American courts and writers, whether in connection with the "sole and despotic dominion view" or rather in support of doctrines more in keeping with a more complex view of property. Finally, it proposes an answer to the question set out in the title, identifying the historical context and motivations for the identification of the absolute, individualistic view of property with Blackstone in particular.
Comparative Property Law: Global Perspectives (Michele Graziadei & Lionel Smith eds), 2017
In a world in which ever-growing demand for water meets an essentially finite supply, it is unsur... more In a world in which ever-growing demand for water meets an essentially finite supply, it is unsurprising that rights in water have received much attention from courts and legislatures. Perhaps more surprising are the radical variety of property regimes governing this resource and the intensity of attention water rights have received in the scholarly literature. "Property" can sometimes connote land, the classic resource of property law; yet water often serves as land's alter ego, an exemplar of the odd, the esoteric, the colorful, or the cutting-edge in property law, set against the staid familiarity of land law.
This chapter briefly surveys the salient issues discussed in recent scholarship on property in water, including classification of systems of property in water, positive and normative theories of water rights, empirical and historical evidence impacting on these theories, public rights in water, and a human right to water.
Between Ruin and Restoration: Chapters in Israel's Environmental History (Dan Orenstein, Char Miller & Alon Tal eds.), 2013
This chapter argues that the continuing influence of British colonial law on Israeli environmenta... more This chapter argues that the continuing influence of British colonial law on Israeli environmental law can be felt far beyond the Mandate-era statutes that remain on the books. Israel’s colonial past is evident in the very “DNA” of its environmental law. Even apparently novel statutes are essentially revised drafts of colonial legislation. In place of general regulations setting out the terms and conditions under which pollutants may be emitted, the state retains immense discretionary power to set standards on an individual, ad hoc basis, or to allow pollution without any standards at all. Other trends in the law, such as the constant search for a fix to the compliance problem, and the rush to economic tools, also expose Israel’s colonial past, as signs of the legal system’s attempts to put that past behind it and join the cast of “civilized countries.”
הפרק הזה טוען שההשפעה המתמשכת של המשפט הקולוניאלי הבריטי על דיני הסביבה בישראל ניכרים הרבה מעבר לחקיקה המנדטורית שנותרה בספר החוקים הישראלי. העבר הקולוניאלי של ישראל ניכר בעצם הדנ"א של דיני הסביבה. גם דברי חקיקה חדישים למראה הם בעצם גירסאות מתוקנות של חקיקה קולוניאלית. במקום תקנות כלליות הקובעות את התנאים בהם ניתן לפלוט מזהמים לסביבה, למדינה מוענק שיקול דעת רחב לקבוע תקנים על בסיס פרטני ואד-הוק, וגם להתיר זיהום ללא כל תנאי. מגמות אחרות בדין, כגון החיפוש המתמיד אחרי פתרון לבעיית האכיפה, והנהירה אחרי כלים כלכליים, חושפות גם הן את עברה הקולוניאלי של ישראל: הן מסמנות את שאיפת המערכת להיפרד מהעבר הזה ולהצטרף לשורת "המדינות המתוקנות".
Managing the Unknown: Essays on Environmental Ignorance (Uwe Luebken & Frank Uekötter eds.), 2014
Historians such as Richard Grove and Gregory Barton have emphasized the central place of “empire ... more Historians such as Richard Grove and Gregory Barton have emphasized the central place of “empire forestry” in the emergent environmentalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two themes in their work are engaged in this book chapter: One, the role of forestry in the imperial environmental mind in combating climate change; the other, the relationship between state and private property in the legal management of forests. The history of Palestine forest law may lead to modification of the conventional wisdom on these issues, demonstrating how scientific and legal unknowns may channel forest policy in undesirable directions.
מרכזיותה של "יערנות אימפריאלית" בסביבתנות המתפתחת של המאה התשע-עשרה ותחילת המאה העשרים הודגשה על ידי היסטוריונים כמו ריצ'רד גרוב וגרגורי ברטון. הפרק הזה מתכתב עם שתי תמות בעבודתם: תפקידה של היערנות בתודעה האימפריאלית כאמצעי למאבק בשינוי האקלים; והיחסים שבין קניין המדינה לקניין פרטי בניהול המשפטי של יערות. ההיסטוריה של דיני היערות בפלשתינה-א"י עשויה להביא לתיקון דעות רווחות בסוגיות הללו, ולהדגים איך נעלמים מדעיים ומשפטיים עשויים להוביל מדיניות סביבתית לכיוונים בעייתיים.
Tel Aviv University Legal Working Paper Series, Jan 1, 2008
A more advanced version of this article can be found in the book The Colorado Doctrine (Yale Univ... more A more advanced version of this article can be found in the book The Colorado Doctrine (Yale University Press, 2012).
keywords: legal history, monopoly, prior appropriation, property theory, water history
Making ex... more keywords: legal history, monopoly, prior appropriation, property theory, water history
Making extensive use of archival and other primary sources, David Schorr demonstrates that the development of the “appropriation doctrine,” a system of private rights in water, was part of a radical attack on monopoly and corporate power in the arid West. Schorr describes how Colorado miners, irrigators, lawmakers, and judges forged a system of private property in water based on a desire to spread property and its benefits as widely as possible among independent citizens. He demonstrates that ownership was not dictated by concerns for economic efficiency, but by a regard for social justice.
Reviewed in Agricultural History, American Historical Review, Arizona Water Resource, Business History Review, Environmental History, Hastings West-Northwest Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Journal of American History, Pacific Historical Review, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, University of Denver Water Law Review, Water History, Western Historical Quarterly, Western Legal History
Issue of the Hebrew-language history journal זמנים (Zmanim) on environmental history, edited by D... more Issue of the Hebrew-language history journal זמנים (Zmanim) on environmental history, edited by David Schorr and Miri Shefer-Mossensohn.
Volume 19, issue 2 of Theoretical Inquiries in Law, edited by Carol M. Rose and David B. Schorr
... more Volume 19, issue 2 of Theoretical Inquiries in Law, edited by Carol M. Rose and David B. Schorr
Theoretical Inquiries in Law, Volume 10, No. 1 (co-edited with Gideon Parchomovsky)
For pdfs of a... more Theoretical Inquiries in Law, Volume 10, No. 1 (co-edited with Gideon Parchomovsky) For pdfs of all the articles, go to http://eial.tau.ac.il/index.php/til/issue/view/55
Collection of articles (in Hebrew) on Israel's Clean Air Law, co-edited with Oren Perez.
Hukim, v... more Collection of articles (in Hebrew) on Israel's Clean Air Law, co-edited with Oren Perez. Hukim, vol. 7 (2015)
The article explains why proposals for an Israeli Climate Law with national emissions targets are... more The article explains why proposals for an Israeli Climate Law with national emissions targets are a distraction: Such a law is unnecessary, as existing law provides ample authority for any desirable mitigation measures and targets. It is also bound to fail, as the history of Israeli environmental regulation shows that heavy reliance on emissions targets in areas such as air pollution and waste disposal has a long history of failure in reaching environmental goals. What is needed instead are concrete steps to cut emissions in a variety of contexts. A general climate law, even with ambitious targets, will have little effect.
בתקופה האחרונה מקודמות בערוצים שונים הצעות ל"חוק אקלים" ישראלי. החוק אמור לקבוע יעדים לקיצוצים בפליטות של גזי חממה, לדרוש הכנה של תכניות להפחתת פליטות ולהסתגלות לשינויי האקלים, לכונן גופים שייעצו לממשלה בנושא, ועוד.
מאמר קצר זה יבחן את הצעות החוק האלה ויטען שאין כל צורך בחוק כזה. מעבר לכך, הוא יטען גם שחוק אקלים במתכונת המוצעת חסר כל תוחלת. אין בו צורך כי הסמכויות לבצע את הפעולות המוזכרות בהצעות החוק כבר מעוגנות היטב בדין הקיים. חוק זה גם לא יועיל כי הטכניקה של קביעת יעדים בחוק, טכניקה המועדפת על ידי המחוקק הישראלי (מסיבות שתפורטנה), נועדה לכישלון. מעבר לכך, ההיסטוריה מלמדת שעיגון הסדרים סביבתיים בחקיקה ראשית אינו הופך אותם ליציבים יותר או לבעלי סיכויים גבוהים במיוחד להיות מיושמים בפועל.
מה שנדרש מחוק אקלים ישראלי אינו הצגת יעדים כלליים שאינם מחייבים איש באמת, אלא קביעת חובות קונקרטיות ומדידות הניתנות לאכיפה – וכאלה אין בגרסאות השונות של החוק המוצעות כיום, מן הסתם עקב העדר היתכנות פוליטית לחקיקת חוק כזה. נדרשים איסורים, תמריצים, ותיקנון שיחייבו פרטים, ארגונים וגופים ממלכתיים לצמצם את פעילויותיהם המזיקות ולעבור לחברה ולכלכלה דלות-פחמן ומותאמות למציאות האקלימית המתהווה. את מעט ההון הפוליטי שיש לאלה הרוצים להצעיד את ישראל קדימה במישור האקלימי מוטב להוציא על צעדים אופרטיביים גם אם השפעתם תהיה צרה יחסית, ובניצול ההזדמנויות הקיימות בדין כדי לצמצם את הפליטות של גזי החממה שמקורן בישראל, ולהיערך לשינויי האקלים שכבר מתרחשים ולאלה שעוד יבואו. המאמר יציע כמה כיוונים לפעולות משפטיות שיכולות לצמצם את פליטות גזי החממה בישראל בלי צורך בחוק חדש.
Local bylaws were the primary tool for local governments in British-ruled Palestine to exercise t... more Local bylaws were the primary tool for local governments in British-ruled Palestine to exercise their authority, and water was the paradigmatic subject for local legislation. Looking at the diffusion of legal norms in local bylaws in the 1930s and '40s, the article examines the dynamics of law-making in a context characterized by both imperial rule and inter-communal conflict. The article asks two major questions: To what extent did the bylaws adopt legal norms and forms across communal boundaries? And was the legislation passed by local governments as the product of local preferences and initiative, or did it rather reflect the desires of the British rulers? Understanding the processes of legal transplantation at the local level can help shed light on a number of issues. For the history of Mandate Palestine, it can refine our understanding of the degree to which the Arab and Jewish communities, engaged in sustained conflict, nonetheless interacted in the fields of urban infrastructure and local law-making. For imperial environmental history, it provides an opportunity to test theories about water policy as an expression of top-down power. For the legal history of empire, it highlights a level of law-making, located somewhere between imperial imposition and indigenous resistance, that has largely been neglected. And for understanding of legal transplantation or diffusion, it offers a fine-grained case study in the way in which legal norms might move and transform-across jurisdictional, communal, and cultural lines.
This article, written for an issue of Clio@Themis on "Nature as a Norm", examines the water law o... more This article, written for an issue of Clio@Themis on "Nature as a Norm", examines the water law of jurisdictions from across the "common law world" in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period in which increasingly intensive uses of water and watercourses frequently brought conflicts over water into court. An issue that arose in a variety of contexts was the degree to which the rules of English law with regard to water could or should be applied in territories characterized by environmental conditions that often differed radically from those found in England. A legal regime that seemed unremarkable in the home country often seemed a poor fit for the conditions of other, far-off lands, leading to friction between the law and the lived life of the colony and its natural environment. The article explores some of the areas of water law in which courts around the common law world departed from the established rules of the common law in order to make the legal rules more appropriate, as they saw it, to the local environment. They did so consciously, explicitly granting nature normative force. It also looks at other courts and judges, ones that resisted this kind of normative claim, arguing that the law in new environments had to conform to the old common-law rules, regardless of what nature seemed to demand. Perhaps surprisingly, this discourse in far-flung jurisdictions about the potential legal force of local environmental conditions was at the same time a global one: Arguments were made not only about the differences between local and British nature, but also about the similarities between the natures of territories very distant and different from each other. Both types of environmental comparisons were seen to have normative significance.
The ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court in Ata v. Schwartz is best known today as a exposition by... more The ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court in Ata v. Schwartz is best known today as a exposition by an Israeli court of possible remedies in cases of nuisance, suggested by Calabresi and Melamed's seminal article on property rules, liability rules, and inalienability. Yet the case's historical importance extends beyond the boundaries of this narrow issue: The defendant was a legendary company, a symbol of Zionist collectivism, and the lawsuit attacking it was viewed as a sort of selfish provocation against these values. Moreover, the Court's decision, that celebrated individual rights and criticized the economic analysis of law, hid an important element of the decision – the import of economic analysis into Israeli law, in a discussion that had no parallel in the contemporary world. These aspects make Ata v. Schwartz an important episode not only in Israeli tort law, but in the chronicles of the various strands of Israeli liberalism in general, and legal liberalism in particular.
פסק-הדין של בית-המשפט העליון בפרשת אתא נ' שוורץ מוכר היום בעיקר בתור התייחסות של הפסיקה הישראלית בסעדים האפשריים למקרי מטרד שהוצעו במאמרם המכונן של קלברזי ומלמד על כללי קניין, כללי אחריות, ואי-עבירות. אך חשיבותו ההיסטורית של פסק-הדין חורגת מגבולות הסוגיה הצרה הזאת: הנתבעת בפרשה היתה חברה אגדית במשק הישראלי, סמל לקולקטיביזם ציוני, והתביעה נגדה נתפסה בזמנה שסוג של התרסה אנוכית נגד ערכים אלה. יתרה מזו, הכרעתו של בית-המשפט העליון, שהעלתה את זכויות הפרט על נס וביקרה את הניתוח הכלכלי של המשפט, הסוותה יסוד חשוב בפסק-הדין – ייבוא של הניתוח הכלכלי למשפט הישראלי, בדיון שלא היה לו אח ורע בעולם בשנת 1976. היבטים אלה הופכים את אתא נ' שוורץ לפרשה חשובה לא רק בדיני הנזיקין הישראליים אלא בתולדות הליברליזם הישראלי בכלל והליברליזם המשפטי בפרט, על זרמיהם השונים.
This article argues that modern commons theory has been substantially shaped by early modern ways... more This article argues that modern commons theory has been substantially shaped by early modern ways of thinking about the evolution of civilizations. In particular, it has hewed closely to models that gelled in the Enlightenment-era works known as "stadial theory," by authors such as Lord Kames and Adam Smith, and passed down to the twentieth century, to theorists including Garrett Hardin, Harold Demsetz, and Elinor Ostrom. It argues that stadial thinking reached modern commons theorists largely through the disciplines of anthropology and human ecology, paying particular attention to the debate among anthropologists over aboriginal property rights, colonial and international development discourse, and neo-Malthusian conservationism. The effects of stadial theories' influence include a belief among many that private property represents a more advanced stage of civilization than does the commons; and among others a Romantic yearning to return to an Eden of primitive and community-based commons. Thus do deep cultural attitudes, rooted in the speculative thinking of an earlier age, color todayʼs theories — positive and normative — of the commons.
Oxford Handbook of Historical Legal Research (Markus Dubber & Christopher Tomlins, eds.), 2018
keywords: history of environmental law, history of environmental regulation, environmental law, e... more keywords: history of environmental law, history of environmental regulation, environmental law, environmental regulation, legal history, environmental history
Environmental law has no history. This is not to say environmental law has no past; indeed, scholars are beginning to uncover its historical roots. What I mean by having no history is, first, that there is a general feeling, common to legal historians and environmental lawyers (particularly in the United States), that environmental law is something new under the sun. Modern environmental law lacks of connection both to earlier periods and to the great themes and trends of legal history. Environmental law has no history in a second, sense, too; it lacks history as a mode of argument or analysis. In legal cultures in which precedent and history are often what make a winning argument, the unavailability of historical analysis as a mode of legal discourse—as it is, for instance, in constitutional and property law (two fields in which environmental legal disputes are often entangled)—means that environmental values often are forced to retreat in the face of others. For these reasons environmental law needs both heightened historical analysis and a sense of its own historical roots. This essay aims to sketch current, possible, and desirable directions for future research into the history of environmental law. Before doing so, it notes a current scholarly pathology.
This article examines what we can learn about the history of environmental law from art. Looking ... more This article examines what we can learn about the history of environmental law from art. Looking mostly at works of the French Impressionists and poster art, but also at a variety of other sources, it explores how we might use art to better understand the background to historical developments in environmental law, its effects, and its very existence.
The development of the law of riparian rights in the Anglo-American world in the nineteenth centu... more The development of the law of riparian rights in the Anglo-American world in the nineteenth century has been analyzed from several points of view, including economic property theory and Marxian legal history. Transnational aspects of the subject have not been neglected, as some have highlighted the transatlantic framework in which this body of doctrine developed, and others have examined the use of Continental, civil law sources by some of the American jurists responsible for that development. Yet the inter-imperial aspect of this story, in particular the meeting of the laws of the British and French Empires, has gone unremarked.
This paper examines the crossed histories of English common law, French civil law, and American law in the jurisprudence of water rights in Lower Canada/Canada East/Quebec in the mid-nineteenth century, and the influence of this jurisprudence on the developing water law of the British Empire.
This article surveys the water law of Palestine under British rule, identifying the legal norms g... more This article surveys the water law of Palestine under British rule, identifying the legal norms governing the use of water and explaining some of the factors shaping the development of this area of the law. It argues that despite their lack of official lawmaking power, Arabs and Jews succeeded in decisively shaping the course taken by water law in this period. After surveying the Ottoman water law in force when the British took power in 1917, the article examines influential court decisions in a case brought by the Arab residents of the village Artas against government expropriation of water, and explains the significance of this litigation for the subsequent development of Palestine’s water law. It then discusses British initiatives meant to reform water law and subject the country’s water to state control, plans frustrated by the opposition of Zionist groups fearful of increased government regulation. It closes by noting that water law was made in this colonial context neither by imposition from above nor by resistance from below, but by intervention of subject peoples at the highest levels of official lawmaking.
מאמר זה סוקר את דיני המים של ארץ ישראל תחת השלטון הבריטי, מזהה את הנורמות שהסדירו את השימוש במים, ומסביר חלק מהגורמים שהשפיעו על התפתחות דינים אלה. הוא טוען שערבים ויהודים, על אף שלא החזיקו בכוח רשמי לחוקק, הצליחו לעצב את דיני המים בתקופה זו בצורה מכרעת. לאחר סקירה של דיני המים עותמאנים שירשו הבריטים עם כיבוש הארץ בשנת 1917, המאמר בוחן פסקי-דין בפרשה שמקורה בעתירה של תושבי הכפר ארטס נגד הפקעת מים על ידי הממשלה, ומסביר את חשיבות הפרשה להמשך ההתפחות של דיני המים בארץ. לאחר מכן הוא בוחן יוזמות בריטיות לרפורמות בדיני המים ולהכפפת משאבי המים לשליטת המדינה, תוכניות שסוכלו על ידי קבוצות ציוניות שחששו מהתערבות הממשלה. המאמר מסכם בתובנה שדיני המים בהקשר קולוניאלי זה לא נכפו מלמעלה וגם לא נוצרו על ידי התנגדות מלמטה, אלא על ידי התערבותם של עמים הנתונים לשלטון קולוניאלי שהתערבו בדרגים הגבוהים ביותר של עיצוב הדין באימפריה.
The bogeyman of institutions and theories that make a place for community in property law is the ... more The bogeyman of institutions and theories that make a place for community in property law is the "Blackstonian conception" of property, based on Blackstone's famous identification of property with "that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe."
Yet, as anyone who has even skimmed Blackstone's Commentaries quickly realizes, it is clear that the great expositor of the common law did not believe that this absolutist and individualist conception squared with the actual institution of property found in English law. Replete with descriptions and justifications of doctrines that recognized and enforced a complex web of individual and community interests in land and other resources, Blackstone's account seems much closer to the "bundle of rights" approach popularized by the American legal realists than to the "absolute dominion" view associated with his name. Why has exclusive dominion as a model for property, then, come to be associated with Blackstone, of all people?
This Article seeks, first of all, to explain why Blackstone would first characterize property as "sole and despotic dominion," and then go on to illustrate, over several hundred pages, the falsity of this definition. The primary goal of the paper, though, is to examine the ways in which Blackstone was invoked by later jurists as authority for property-law propositions. In particular, the Article examines how Blackstone has been cited by English and American courts and writers, whether in connection with the "sole and despotic dominion view" or rather in support of doctrines more in keeping with a more complex view of property. Finally, it proposes an answer to the question set out in the title, identifying the historical context and motivations for the identification of the absolute, individualistic view of property with Blackstone in particular.
Comparative Property Law: Global Perspectives (Michele Graziadei & Lionel Smith eds), 2017
In a world in which ever-growing demand for water meets an essentially finite supply, it is unsur... more In a world in which ever-growing demand for water meets an essentially finite supply, it is unsurprising that rights in water have received much attention from courts and legislatures. Perhaps more surprising are the radical variety of property regimes governing this resource and the intensity of attention water rights have received in the scholarly literature. "Property" can sometimes connote land, the classic resource of property law; yet water often serves as land's alter ego, an exemplar of the odd, the esoteric, the colorful, or the cutting-edge in property law, set against the staid familiarity of land law.
This chapter briefly surveys the salient issues discussed in recent scholarship on property in water, including classification of systems of property in water, positive and normative theories of water rights, empirical and historical evidence impacting on these theories, public rights in water, and a human right to water.
Between Ruin and Restoration: Chapters in Israel's Environmental History (Dan Orenstein, Char Miller & Alon Tal eds.), 2013
This chapter argues that the continuing influence of British colonial law on Israeli environmenta... more This chapter argues that the continuing influence of British colonial law on Israeli environmental law can be felt far beyond the Mandate-era statutes that remain on the books. Israel’s colonial past is evident in the very “DNA” of its environmental law. Even apparently novel statutes are essentially revised drafts of colonial legislation. In place of general regulations setting out the terms and conditions under which pollutants may be emitted, the state retains immense discretionary power to set standards on an individual, ad hoc basis, or to allow pollution without any standards at all. Other trends in the law, such as the constant search for a fix to the compliance problem, and the rush to economic tools, also expose Israel’s colonial past, as signs of the legal system’s attempts to put that past behind it and join the cast of “civilized countries.”
הפרק הזה טוען שההשפעה המתמשכת של המשפט הקולוניאלי הבריטי על דיני הסביבה בישראל ניכרים הרבה מעבר לחקיקה המנדטורית שנותרה בספר החוקים הישראלי. העבר הקולוניאלי של ישראל ניכר בעצם הדנ"א של דיני הסביבה. גם דברי חקיקה חדישים למראה הם בעצם גירסאות מתוקנות של חקיקה קולוניאלית. במקום תקנות כלליות הקובעות את התנאים בהם ניתן לפלוט מזהמים לסביבה, למדינה מוענק שיקול דעת רחב לקבוע תקנים על בסיס פרטני ואד-הוק, וגם להתיר זיהום ללא כל תנאי. מגמות אחרות בדין, כגון החיפוש המתמיד אחרי פתרון לבעיית האכיפה, והנהירה אחרי כלים כלכליים, חושפות גם הן את עברה הקולוניאלי של ישראל: הן מסמנות את שאיפת המערכת להיפרד מהעבר הזה ולהצטרף לשורת "המדינות המתוקנות".
Managing the Unknown: Essays on Environmental Ignorance (Uwe Luebken & Frank Uekötter eds.), 2014
Historians such as Richard Grove and Gregory Barton have emphasized the central place of “empire ... more Historians such as Richard Grove and Gregory Barton have emphasized the central place of “empire forestry” in the emergent environmentalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two themes in their work are engaged in this book chapter: One, the role of forestry in the imperial environmental mind in combating climate change; the other, the relationship between state and private property in the legal management of forests. The history of Palestine forest law may lead to modification of the conventional wisdom on these issues, demonstrating how scientific and legal unknowns may channel forest policy in undesirable directions.
מרכזיותה של "יערנות אימפריאלית" בסביבתנות המתפתחת של המאה התשע-עשרה ותחילת המאה העשרים הודגשה על ידי היסטוריונים כמו ריצ'רד גרוב וגרגורי ברטון. הפרק הזה מתכתב עם שתי תמות בעבודתם: תפקידה של היערנות בתודעה האימפריאלית כאמצעי למאבק בשינוי האקלים; והיחסים שבין קניין המדינה לקניין פרטי בניהול המשפטי של יערות. ההיסטוריה של דיני היערות בפלשתינה-א"י עשויה להביא לתיקון דעות רווחות בסוגיות הללו, ולהדגים איך נעלמים מדעיים ומשפטיים עשויים להוביל מדיניות סביבתית לכיוונים בעייתיים.
Tel Aviv University Legal Working Paper Series, Jan 1, 2008
A more advanced version of this article can be found in the book The Colorado Doctrine (Yale Univ... more A more advanced version of this article can be found in the book The Colorado Doctrine (Yale University Press, 2012).
Tel Aviv University Legal Working Paper Series, Jan 1, 2008
A more advanced version of this article can be found in the book The Colorado Doctrine (Yale Univ... more A more advanced version of this article can be found in the book The Colorado Doctrine (Yale University Press, 2012).
This short piece argues that attempts in Israel to base nature's right to water on the Water Law ... more This short piece argues that attempts in Israel to base nature's right to water on the Water Law are misguided; the law allows water to be allocated to nature, but does not require it. On the other hand, the National Parks Law does provide robust protection for aquatic nature by prohibiting diversions of water that impact nature reserves or interfere with protected natural values. All that is needed is for the law to be enforced.
Also included is a response by Nissim Keshet.
מאמר קצר זה טוען שהנסיונות לבסס את זכות הטבע למים בישראל על חוק המים אינם במקומם - חוק זה אפשר הקצאת מים לטסבע, אך אינו דורש זאת. לעומת זאת, חוק הגנים הלאומיים כן מספק הגנה חזקה לטבע האקווטי בצורת איסורים על ניצול מקורות מים הפוגע בשמורות טבע או המפריע לערכי טבע מוגנים. נדרשת רק אכיפה של החוק.
Offshore oil and gas drilling is expected to lead to environmental harms from both routine activi... more Offshore oil and gas drilling is expected to lead to environmental harms from both routine activity and accidents. Though billions of dollars of damage could be caused, Israel nonetheless has no clear civil liability regime for these harms. As harm to the environment is not considered compensable, these harms will go unameliorated; no one has been designated by the law as owner of Israel's natural resources who can sue on their behalf; and the general liability regime is one of negligence, so that polluters are not liable for many harms. In other countries the situation is different: polluters face strict liability, including for natural resource damages, and trustees are assigned to these resources. A comparative study, alongside analysis of considerations of justice and economic efficiency, lead to the conclusion that Israel should adopt a new liability regime for harms from offshore drilling. The law should be based on accepted regimes in other jurisdictions, and ensure that those causing harm should be liable for environmental restoration and compensation, and have the resources to fulfill these obligations.
The article explores several tensions and problems in the law's permitting regime for major stati... more The article explores several tensions and problems in the law's permitting regime for major stationary sources.
One major issue is the tension between the statute's direction that permits be based on best available technology, and elements of the law and regulations issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection that refer to cost-benefit analysis. The article explains the distributive justice justifications for feasibility (BAT) standards and argues that permits should adhere to these standards even when the best technology is not cost-efficient.
Another issue is whether a technology's economic and technical feasibility should be determined in relation to the firm applying for a permit or in relation to the industrial sector. Here, too, distributive justice considerations support the statutory language pointing to a sector-based analysis, against the developing practice of the Ministry.
A third major issue is whether BATs should be determined by their mitigation of air pollution or rather by their contribution to environmental quality as a whole. Here the article argues that permitting under the statute should require maximum reductions in air pollution, since a standard taking into account the environment as a whole leaves the regulator with essentially unbridled discretion.
In addition to these fundamental issues, the article examines several technical problems with the developing permitting regime, particularly in the regulations and guidance documents that have been issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
Maimonides is generally acclaimed as the most illustrious Jewish philosopher and legal codifier. ... more Maimonides is generally acclaimed as the most illustrious Jewish philosopher and legal codifier. The arguments are presented clearly, logically, and comprehensively, with the necessary terms of art from the fields of Jewish law and tort theory alike, lucidly explained. Morton Horwitz’s historical analysis of American tort law has been highly influential on the study of legal history. The tension between crop-growing farmers and neighboring animal husbandmen is one of the classic conflicts of tort law, discussed by many modern tort scholars, including Ronald Coase and Robert Ellickson. Moreover, the dialogue between Maimonidean tort law and that of today allows for insights into modern tort law. To sum up, this well-researched and detailed study will prove of interest not only to students of Jewish law, but to tort scholars more generally, and it can provide a starting point for further research in this history of tort law, whether Jewish, comparative, or trans-systemic.
On behalf of the Berg Institute for Law and History at TAU I am collecting legal history sources ... more On behalf of the Berg Institute for Law and History at TAU I am collecting legal history sources - primary and secondary - on epidemics and societies' responses to them. The ongoing list of sources is currently here: https://environmentlawhistory.blogspot.com/p/legal-history.html. Please send me any sources you think relevant (including links when possible)!
9th Annual David Berg Foundation Institute International Conference
& Joint Kick-off Workshop wit... more 9th Annual David Berg Foundation Institute International Conference & Joint Kick-off Workshop with the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History
Concluding lecture at conference on Nature and Jews: Approaching German-Jewish Environmental Hist... more Concluding lecture at conference on Nature and Jews: Approaching German-Jewish Environmental History, Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem, January 2021
In the winter and spring of 1942, with Rommel threatening Palestine from North Africa, the reside... more In the winter and spring of 1942, with Rommel threatening Palestine from North Africa, the residents of the country’s populous Tel Aviv-Jaffa area were faced with another threat. Rather than enjoying the sweet springtime smell of the local citrus orchards, residents were assailed repeatedly with noxious fumes emitted from the “Chemical Industry Tel Aviv” plant in the Kiryat Aryeh industrial zone, outside of the Jewish town of Petach Tikva. While the factory, owned by a trio of Jewish businessmen, did not succeed in controlling its emissions to the satisfaction of the authorities, they nonetheless failed to use their legal authority to stop the pollution, leading a neighboring hospital, owned by the Jewish Labor Federation, to bring a nuisance lawsuit to enjoin the pollution. Yet despite losses at trial as well as on appeal to the Supreme Court, the factory’s production and pollution continued unabated, due to intervention by the authorities.
Using contemporary published and archival sources, this paper tells the story of one legal case in Mandate Palestine, using it to examine the relationships and tensions between environmental law in the British Empire and that in Britain; between law in action and law on the books; between private law and public law regulation of the environment; between traditional law (the Mejelle) and modern law (regulatory statutes); between centralized control and local regulation; between Mandate officialdom and local residents; divisions among officials (judges, health officials, and industry regulators) and divisions among local residents (Jews and Arabs, capitalists and socialists, professionals and politicians); and tensions between liberal and public-interest ideologies and rhetoric. It reveals not only the gaps between the extensive regulatory powers of the Mandate government and their use in practice, as well as between judicial rhetoric and decisions and results on the ground, but also surprising coalitions and ideological stances among the various groups involved in the controversy.
Important figures of American conservationism were highly influenced by the landscapes and histor... more Important figures of American conservationism were highly influenced by the landscapes and history of the Mediterranean and the Near East, hoping to avoid the apparent mistakes of older civilizations that had led to environmental degradation, while at the same time admiring some of the more impressive engineering and organizational practices developed in the old world to cope with arid and semi-arid environments.
It seems that the salience of the Orient for American conservation thought had at least two sources, evident not only in conservationists’ writings, but also in visual art and literature of the period. On the one hand, the importance of biblical and classical sources to American culture and politics made the Orient a natural site of inspiration and precedent; on the other, anxiety over the arid and semi-arid lands of the American West – over whether and how they could be settled, and about how the settling of these lands might affect the American polity – gave the experience of Mediterranean peoples in their environment a relevance that was lacking in more familiar landscapes and practices.
These factors highlight an important aspect of this facet of conservationism. Orientalist conservationists tended to stress the connection between physical environment on the one hand, and political and social life on the other. This strand of American conservation thought is thus significant not only in its own right, but also as a representative of a political conservationism that can be contrasted with both sides of the preservationist-Romantic and conservationist-utilitarian dichotomy.
The Society for Comparative Legislation was seemingly an imperial legal institution par excellenc... more The Society for Comparative Legislation was seemingly an imperial legal institution par excellence. Founded as an offshoot of the Imperial Institute in the late Victorian era, it would seem to have been aimed at centralizing and streamlining legal development in the Empire through legal research: layers throughout the Empire would report on local legal developments, British experts would collate and analyze the results, identifying models appropriate for application in other colonies, and the results would be communicated back to the colonies through the Society’s journal. Significantly, while apparently flourishing with the Empire in the years of the latter’s zenith, the Society ended its activities in the wake of Suez, turning its journal into the still-influential International and Comparative Law Quarterly.
Yet the Society’s activities, particularly its journal, raise questions about the direction of legal influence in the Empire and the values associated with it. What accounted for the eagerness of those at the heart of the enterprise to learn about and propagate legal developments outside the metropolis, even outside the Empire? Why the emphasis on legislation, in a journal published at the center of the common law? Who were the figures behind the Society, what were their motivations, and how did they go about their work? Based on the extensive record of publications left behind by the Society, and a few surviving unpublished sources, this paper will attempt to answer these questions.
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Books by David Schorr
Making extensive use of archival and other primary sources, David Schorr demonstrates that the development of the “appropriation doctrine,” a system of private rights in water, was part of a radical attack on monopoly and corporate power in the arid West. Schorr describes how Colorado miners, irrigators, lawmakers, and judges forged a system of private property in water based on a desire to spread property and its benefits as widely as possible among independent citizens. He demonstrates that ownership was not dictated by concerns for economic efficiency, but by a regard for social justice.
Reviewed in Agricultural History, American Historical Review, Arizona Water Resource, Business History Review, Environmental History, Hastings West-Northwest Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Journal of American History, Pacific Historical Review, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, University of Denver Water Law Review, Water History, Western Historical Quarterly, Western Legal History
Edited Collections by David Schorr
https://www.openu.ac.il/publications/zmanim/pages/zmanim142.aspx
For individual articles, follow the link.
For pdfs of all the articles, go to http://eial.tau.ac.il/index.php/til/issue/view/55
Hukim, vol. 7 (2015)
Papers by David Schorr
בתקופה האחרונה מקודמות בערוצים שונים הצעות ל"חוק אקלים" ישראלי. החוק אמור לקבוע יעדים לקיצוצים בפליטות של גזי חממה, לדרוש הכנה של תכניות להפחתת פליטות ולהסתגלות לשינויי האקלים, לכונן גופים שייעצו לממשלה בנושא, ועוד.
מאמר קצר זה יבחן את הצעות החוק האלה ויטען שאין כל צורך בחוק כזה. מעבר לכך, הוא יטען גם שחוק אקלים במתכונת המוצעת חסר כל תוחלת. אין בו צורך כי הסמכויות לבצע את הפעולות המוזכרות בהצעות החוק כבר מעוגנות היטב בדין הקיים. חוק זה גם לא יועיל כי הטכניקה של קביעת יעדים בחוק, טכניקה המועדפת על ידי המחוקק הישראלי (מסיבות שתפורטנה), נועדה לכישלון. מעבר לכך, ההיסטוריה מלמדת שעיגון הסדרים סביבתיים בחקיקה ראשית אינו הופך אותם ליציבים יותר או לבעלי סיכויים גבוהים במיוחד להיות מיושמים בפועל.
מה שנדרש מחוק אקלים ישראלי אינו הצגת יעדים כלליים שאינם מחייבים איש באמת, אלא קביעת חובות קונקרטיות ומדידות הניתנות לאכיפה – וכאלה אין בגרסאות השונות של החוק המוצעות כיום, מן הסתם עקב העדר היתכנות פוליטית לחקיקת חוק כזה. נדרשים איסורים, תמריצים, ותיקנון שיחייבו פרטים, ארגונים וגופים ממלכתיים לצמצם את פעילויותיהם המזיקות ולעבור לחברה ולכלכלה דלות-פחמן ומותאמות למציאות האקלימית המתהווה. את מעט ההון הפוליטי שיש לאלה הרוצים להצעיד את ישראל קדימה במישור האקלימי מוטב להוציא על צעדים אופרטיביים גם אם השפעתם תהיה צרה יחסית, ובניצול ההזדמנויות הקיימות בדין כדי לצמצם את הפליטות של גזי החממה שמקורן בישראל, ולהיערך לשינויי האקלים שכבר מתרחשים ולאלה שעוד יבואו. המאמר יציע כמה כיוונים לפעולות משפטיות שיכולות לצמצם את פליטות גזי החממה בישראל בלי צורך בחוק חדש.
The article explores some of the areas of water law in which courts around the common law world departed from the established rules of the common law in order to make the legal rules more appropriate, as they saw it, to the local environment. They did so consciously, explicitly granting nature normative force. It also looks at other courts and judges, ones that resisted this kind of normative claim, arguing that the law in new environments had to conform to the old common-law rules, regardless of what nature seemed to demand. Perhaps surprisingly, this discourse in far-flung jurisdictions about the potential legal force of local environmental conditions was at the same time a global one: Arguments were made not only about the differences between local and British nature, but also about the similarities between the natures of territories very distant and different from each other. Both types of environmental comparisons were seen to have normative significance.
פסק-הדין של בית-המשפט העליון בפרשת אתא נ' שוורץ מוכר היום בעיקר בתור התייחסות של הפסיקה הישראלית בסעדים האפשריים למקרי מטרד שהוצעו במאמרם המכונן של קלברזי ומלמד על כללי קניין, כללי אחריות, ואי-עבירות. אך חשיבותו ההיסטורית של פסק-הדין חורגת מגבולות הסוגיה הצרה הזאת: הנתבעת בפרשה היתה חברה אגדית במשק הישראלי, סמל לקולקטיביזם ציוני, והתביעה נגדה נתפסה בזמנה שסוג של התרסה אנוכית נגד ערכים אלה. יתרה מזו, הכרעתו של בית-המשפט העליון, שהעלתה את זכויות הפרט על נס וביקרה את הניתוח הכלכלי של המשפט, הסוותה יסוד חשוב בפסק-הדין – ייבוא של הניתוח הכלכלי למשפט הישראלי, בדיון שלא היה לו אח ורע בעולם בשנת 1976. היבטים אלה הופכים את אתא נ' שוורץ לפרשה חשובה לא רק בדיני הנזיקין הישראליים אלא בתולדות הליברליזם הישראלי בכלל והליברליזם המשפטי בפרט, על זרמיהם השונים.
Environmental law has no history. This is not to say environmental law has no past; indeed, scholars are beginning to uncover its historical roots. What I mean by having no history is, first, that there is a general feeling, common to legal historians and environmental lawyers (particularly in the United States), that environmental law is something new under the sun. Modern environmental law lacks of connection both to earlier periods and to the great themes and trends of legal history.
Environmental law has no history in a second, sense, too; it lacks history as a mode of argument or analysis. In legal cultures in which precedent and history are often what make a winning argument, the unavailability of historical analysis as a mode of legal discourse—as it is, for instance, in constitutional and property law (two fields in which environmental legal disputes are often entangled)—means that environmental values often are forced to retreat in the face of others.
For these reasons environmental law needs both heightened historical analysis and a sense of its own historical roots. This essay aims to sketch current, possible, and desirable directions for future research into the history of environmental law. Before doing so, it notes a current scholarly pathology.
This paper examines the crossed histories of English common law, French civil law, and American law in the jurisprudence of water rights in Lower Canada/Canada East/Quebec in the mid-nineteenth century, and the influence of this jurisprudence on the developing water law of the British Empire.
מאמר זה סוקר את דיני המים של ארץ ישראל תחת השלטון הבריטי, מזהה את הנורמות שהסדירו את השימוש במים, ומסביר חלק מהגורמים שהשפיעו על התפתחות דינים אלה. הוא טוען שערבים ויהודים, על אף שלא החזיקו בכוח רשמי לחוקק, הצליחו לעצב את דיני המים בתקופה זו בצורה מכרעת. לאחר סקירה של דיני המים עותמאנים שירשו הבריטים עם כיבוש הארץ בשנת 1917, המאמר בוחן פסקי-דין בפרשה שמקורה בעתירה של תושבי הכפר ארטס נגד הפקעת מים על ידי הממשלה, ומסביר את חשיבות הפרשה להמשך ההתפחות של דיני המים בארץ. לאחר מכן הוא בוחן יוזמות בריטיות לרפורמות בדיני המים ולהכפפת משאבי המים לשליטת המדינה, תוכניות שסוכלו על ידי קבוצות ציוניות שחששו מהתערבות הממשלה. המאמר מסכם בתובנה שדיני המים בהקשר קולוניאלי זה לא נכפו מלמעלה וגם לא נוצרו על ידי התנגדות מלמטה, אלא על ידי התערבותם של עמים הנתונים לשלטון קולוניאלי שהתערבו בדרגים הגבוהים ביותר של עיצוב הדין באימפריה.
Yet, as anyone who has even skimmed Blackstone's Commentaries quickly realizes, it is clear that the great expositor of the common law did not believe that this absolutist and individualist conception squared with the actual institution of property found in English law. Replete with descriptions and justifications of doctrines that recognized and enforced a complex web of individual and community interests in land and other resources, Blackstone's account seems much closer to the "bundle of rights" approach popularized by the American legal realists than to the "absolute dominion" view associated with his name. Why has exclusive dominion as a model for property, then, come to be associated with Blackstone, of all people?
This Article seeks, first of all, to explain why Blackstone would first characterize property as "sole and despotic dominion," and then go on to illustrate, over several hundred pages, the falsity of this definition. The primary goal of the paper, though, is to examine the ways in which Blackstone was invoked by later jurists as authority for property-law propositions. In particular, the Article examines how Blackstone has been cited by English and American courts and writers, whether in connection with the "sole and despotic dominion view" or rather in support of doctrines more in keeping with a more complex view of property. Finally, it proposes an answer to the question set out in the title, identifying the historical context and motivations for the identification of the absolute, individualistic view of property with Blackstone in particular.
This chapter briefly surveys the salient issues discussed in recent scholarship on property in water, including classification of systems of property in water, positive and normative theories of water rights, empirical and historical evidence impacting on these theories, public rights in water, and a human right to water.
הפרק הזה טוען שההשפעה המתמשכת של המשפט הקולוניאלי הבריטי על דיני הסביבה בישראל ניכרים הרבה מעבר לחקיקה המנדטורית שנותרה בספר החוקים הישראלי. העבר הקולוניאלי של ישראל ניכר בעצם הדנ"א של דיני הסביבה. גם דברי חקיקה חדישים למראה הם בעצם גירסאות מתוקנות של חקיקה קולוניאלית. במקום תקנות כלליות הקובעות את התנאים בהם ניתן לפלוט מזהמים לסביבה, למדינה מוענק שיקול דעת רחב לקבוע תקנים על בסיס פרטני ואד-הוק, וגם להתיר זיהום ללא כל תנאי. מגמות אחרות בדין, כגון החיפוש המתמיד אחרי פתרון לבעיית האכיפה, והנהירה אחרי כלים כלכליים, חושפות גם הן את עברה הקולוניאלי של ישראל: הן מסמנות את שאיפת המערכת להיפרד מהעבר הזה ולהצטרף לשורת "המדינות המתוקנות".
מרכזיותה של "יערנות אימפריאלית" בסביבתנות המתפתחת של המאה התשע-עשרה ותחילת המאה העשרים הודגשה על ידי היסטוריונים כמו ריצ'רד גרוב וגרגורי ברטון. הפרק הזה מתכתב עם שתי תמות בעבודתם: תפקידה של היערנות בתודעה האימפריאלית כאמצעי למאבק בשינוי האקלים; והיחסים שבין קניין המדינה לקניין פרטי בניהול המשפטי של יערות. ההיסטוריה של דיני היערות בפלשתינה-א"י עשויה להביא לתיקון דעות רווחות בסוגיות הללו, ולהדגים איך נעלמים מדעיים ומשפטיים עשויים להוביל מדיניות סביבתית לכיוונים בעייתיים.
Making extensive use of archival and other primary sources, David Schorr demonstrates that the development of the “appropriation doctrine,” a system of private rights in water, was part of a radical attack on monopoly and corporate power in the arid West. Schorr describes how Colorado miners, irrigators, lawmakers, and judges forged a system of private property in water based on a desire to spread property and its benefits as widely as possible among independent citizens. He demonstrates that ownership was not dictated by concerns for economic efficiency, but by a regard for social justice.
Reviewed in Agricultural History, American Historical Review, Arizona Water Resource, Business History Review, Environmental History, Hastings West-Northwest Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Journal of American History, Pacific Historical Review, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, University of Denver Water Law Review, Water History, Western Historical Quarterly, Western Legal History
https://www.openu.ac.il/publications/zmanim/pages/zmanim142.aspx
For individual articles, follow the link.
For pdfs of all the articles, go to http://eial.tau.ac.il/index.php/til/issue/view/55
Hukim, vol. 7 (2015)
בתקופה האחרונה מקודמות בערוצים שונים הצעות ל"חוק אקלים" ישראלי. החוק אמור לקבוע יעדים לקיצוצים בפליטות של גזי חממה, לדרוש הכנה של תכניות להפחתת פליטות ולהסתגלות לשינויי האקלים, לכונן גופים שייעצו לממשלה בנושא, ועוד.
מאמר קצר זה יבחן את הצעות החוק האלה ויטען שאין כל צורך בחוק כזה. מעבר לכך, הוא יטען גם שחוק אקלים במתכונת המוצעת חסר כל תוחלת. אין בו צורך כי הסמכויות לבצע את הפעולות המוזכרות בהצעות החוק כבר מעוגנות היטב בדין הקיים. חוק זה גם לא יועיל כי הטכניקה של קביעת יעדים בחוק, טכניקה המועדפת על ידי המחוקק הישראלי (מסיבות שתפורטנה), נועדה לכישלון. מעבר לכך, ההיסטוריה מלמדת שעיגון הסדרים סביבתיים בחקיקה ראשית אינו הופך אותם ליציבים יותר או לבעלי סיכויים גבוהים במיוחד להיות מיושמים בפועל.
מה שנדרש מחוק אקלים ישראלי אינו הצגת יעדים כלליים שאינם מחייבים איש באמת, אלא קביעת חובות קונקרטיות ומדידות הניתנות לאכיפה – וכאלה אין בגרסאות השונות של החוק המוצעות כיום, מן הסתם עקב העדר היתכנות פוליטית לחקיקת חוק כזה. נדרשים איסורים, תמריצים, ותיקנון שיחייבו פרטים, ארגונים וגופים ממלכתיים לצמצם את פעילויותיהם המזיקות ולעבור לחברה ולכלכלה דלות-פחמן ומותאמות למציאות האקלימית המתהווה. את מעט ההון הפוליטי שיש לאלה הרוצים להצעיד את ישראל קדימה במישור האקלימי מוטב להוציא על צעדים אופרטיביים גם אם השפעתם תהיה צרה יחסית, ובניצול ההזדמנויות הקיימות בדין כדי לצמצם את הפליטות של גזי החממה שמקורן בישראל, ולהיערך לשינויי האקלים שכבר מתרחשים ולאלה שעוד יבואו. המאמר יציע כמה כיוונים לפעולות משפטיות שיכולות לצמצם את פליטות גזי החממה בישראל בלי צורך בחוק חדש.
The article explores some of the areas of water law in which courts around the common law world departed from the established rules of the common law in order to make the legal rules more appropriate, as they saw it, to the local environment. They did so consciously, explicitly granting nature normative force. It also looks at other courts and judges, ones that resisted this kind of normative claim, arguing that the law in new environments had to conform to the old common-law rules, regardless of what nature seemed to demand. Perhaps surprisingly, this discourse in far-flung jurisdictions about the potential legal force of local environmental conditions was at the same time a global one: Arguments were made not only about the differences between local and British nature, but also about the similarities between the natures of territories very distant and different from each other. Both types of environmental comparisons were seen to have normative significance.
פסק-הדין של בית-המשפט העליון בפרשת אתא נ' שוורץ מוכר היום בעיקר בתור התייחסות של הפסיקה הישראלית בסעדים האפשריים למקרי מטרד שהוצעו במאמרם המכונן של קלברזי ומלמד על כללי קניין, כללי אחריות, ואי-עבירות. אך חשיבותו ההיסטורית של פסק-הדין חורגת מגבולות הסוגיה הצרה הזאת: הנתבעת בפרשה היתה חברה אגדית במשק הישראלי, סמל לקולקטיביזם ציוני, והתביעה נגדה נתפסה בזמנה שסוג של התרסה אנוכית נגד ערכים אלה. יתרה מזו, הכרעתו של בית-המשפט העליון, שהעלתה את זכויות הפרט על נס וביקרה את הניתוח הכלכלי של המשפט, הסוותה יסוד חשוב בפסק-הדין – ייבוא של הניתוח הכלכלי למשפט הישראלי, בדיון שלא היה לו אח ורע בעולם בשנת 1976. היבטים אלה הופכים את אתא נ' שוורץ לפרשה חשובה לא רק בדיני הנזיקין הישראליים אלא בתולדות הליברליזם הישראלי בכלל והליברליזם המשפטי בפרט, על זרמיהם השונים.
Environmental law has no history. This is not to say environmental law has no past; indeed, scholars are beginning to uncover its historical roots. What I mean by having no history is, first, that there is a general feeling, common to legal historians and environmental lawyers (particularly in the United States), that environmental law is something new under the sun. Modern environmental law lacks of connection both to earlier periods and to the great themes and trends of legal history.
Environmental law has no history in a second, sense, too; it lacks history as a mode of argument or analysis. In legal cultures in which precedent and history are often what make a winning argument, the unavailability of historical analysis as a mode of legal discourse—as it is, for instance, in constitutional and property law (two fields in which environmental legal disputes are often entangled)—means that environmental values often are forced to retreat in the face of others.
For these reasons environmental law needs both heightened historical analysis and a sense of its own historical roots. This essay aims to sketch current, possible, and desirable directions for future research into the history of environmental law. Before doing so, it notes a current scholarly pathology.
This paper examines the crossed histories of English common law, French civil law, and American law in the jurisprudence of water rights in Lower Canada/Canada East/Quebec in the mid-nineteenth century, and the influence of this jurisprudence on the developing water law of the British Empire.
מאמר זה סוקר את דיני המים של ארץ ישראל תחת השלטון הבריטי, מזהה את הנורמות שהסדירו את השימוש במים, ומסביר חלק מהגורמים שהשפיעו על התפתחות דינים אלה. הוא טוען שערבים ויהודים, על אף שלא החזיקו בכוח רשמי לחוקק, הצליחו לעצב את דיני המים בתקופה זו בצורה מכרעת. לאחר סקירה של דיני המים עותמאנים שירשו הבריטים עם כיבוש הארץ בשנת 1917, המאמר בוחן פסקי-דין בפרשה שמקורה בעתירה של תושבי הכפר ארטס נגד הפקעת מים על ידי הממשלה, ומסביר את חשיבות הפרשה להמשך ההתפחות של דיני המים בארץ. לאחר מכן הוא בוחן יוזמות בריטיות לרפורמות בדיני המים ולהכפפת משאבי המים לשליטת המדינה, תוכניות שסוכלו על ידי קבוצות ציוניות שחששו מהתערבות הממשלה. המאמר מסכם בתובנה שדיני המים בהקשר קולוניאלי זה לא נכפו מלמעלה וגם לא נוצרו על ידי התנגדות מלמטה, אלא על ידי התערבותם של עמים הנתונים לשלטון קולוניאלי שהתערבו בדרגים הגבוהים ביותר של עיצוב הדין באימפריה.
Yet, as anyone who has even skimmed Blackstone's Commentaries quickly realizes, it is clear that the great expositor of the common law did not believe that this absolutist and individualist conception squared with the actual institution of property found in English law. Replete with descriptions and justifications of doctrines that recognized and enforced a complex web of individual and community interests in land and other resources, Blackstone's account seems much closer to the "bundle of rights" approach popularized by the American legal realists than to the "absolute dominion" view associated with his name. Why has exclusive dominion as a model for property, then, come to be associated with Blackstone, of all people?
This Article seeks, first of all, to explain why Blackstone would first characterize property as "sole and despotic dominion," and then go on to illustrate, over several hundred pages, the falsity of this definition. The primary goal of the paper, though, is to examine the ways in which Blackstone was invoked by later jurists as authority for property-law propositions. In particular, the Article examines how Blackstone has been cited by English and American courts and writers, whether in connection with the "sole and despotic dominion view" or rather in support of doctrines more in keeping with a more complex view of property. Finally, it proposes an answer to the question set out in the title, identifying the historical context and motivations for the identification of the absolute, individualistic view of property with Blackstone in particular.
This chapter briefly surveys the salient issues discussed in recent scholarship on property in water, including classification of systems of property in water, positive and normative theories of water rights, empirical and historical evidence impacting on these theories, public rights in water, and a human right to water.
הפרק הזה טוען שההשפעה המתמשכת של המשפט הקולוניאלי הבריטי על דיני הסביבה בישראל ניכרים הרבה מעבר לחקיקה המנדטורית שנותרה בספר החוקים הישראלי. העבר הקולוניאלי של ישראל ניכר בעצם הדנ"א של דיני הסביבה. גם דברי חקיקה חדישים למראה הם בעצם גירסאות מתוקנות של חקיקה קולוניאלית. במקום תקנות כלליות הקובעות את התנאים בהם ניתן לפלוט מזהמים לסביבה, למדינה מוענק שיקול דעת רחב לקבוע תקנים על בסיס פרטני ואד-הוק, וגם להתיר זיהום ללא כל תנאי. מגמות אחרות בדין, כגון החיפוש המתמיד אחרי פתרון לבעיית האכיפה, והנהירה אחרי כלים כלכליים, חושפות גם הן את עברה הקולוניאלי של ישראל: הן מסמנות את שאיפת המערכת להיפרד מהעבר הזה ולהצטרף לשורת "המדינות המתוקנות".
מרכזיותה של "יערנות אימפריאלית" בסביבתנות המתפתחת של המאה התשע-עשרה ותחילת המאה העשרים הודגשה על ידי היסטוריונים כמו ריצ'רד גרוב וגרגורי ברטון. הפרק הזה מתכתב עם שתי תמות בעבודתם: תפקידה של היערנות בתודעה האימפריאלית כאמצעי למאבק בשינוי האקלים; והיחסים שבין קניין המדינה לקניין פרטי בניהול המשפטי של יערות. ההיסטוריה של דיני היערות בפלשתינה-א"י עשויה להביא לתיקון דעות רווחות בסוגיות הללו, ולהדגים איך נעלמים מדעיים ומשפטיים עשויים להוביל מדיניות סביבתית לכיוונים בעייתיים.
Also included is a response by Nissim Keshet.
מאמר קצר זה טוען שהנסיונות לבסס את זכות הטבע למים בישראל על חוק המים אינם במקומם - חוק זה אפשר הקצאת מים לטסבע, אך אינו דורש זאת. לעומת זאת, חוק הגנים הלאומיים כן מספק הגנה חזקה לטבע האקווטי בצורת איסורים על ניצול מקורות מים הפוגע בשמורות טבע או המפריע לערכי טבע מוגנים. נדרשת רק אכיפה של החוק.
לצד המאמר הקצר מפורסם גם תגובתו של ניסים קשת.
One major issue is the tension between the statute's direction that permits be based on best available technology, and elements of the law and regulations issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection that refer to cost-benefit analysis. The article explains the distributive justice justifications for feasibility (BAT) standards and argues that permits should adhere to these standards even when the best technology is not cost-efficient.
Another issue is whether a technology's economic and technical feasibility should be determined in relation to the firm applying for a permit or in relation to the industrial sector. Here, too, distributive justice considerations support the statutory language pointing to a sector-based analysis, against the developing practice of the Ministry.
A third major issue is whether BATs should be determined by their mitigation of air pollution or rather by their contribution to environmental quality as a whole. Here the article argues that permitting under the statute should require maximum reductions in air pollution, since a standard taking into account the environment as a whole leaves the regulator with essentially unbridled discretion.
In addition to these fundamental issues, the article examines several technical problems with the developing permitting regime, particularly in the regulations and guidance documents that have been issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
The ongoing list of sources is currently here: https://environmentlawhistory.blogspot.com/p/legal-history.html.
Please send me any sources you think relevant (including links when possible)!
& Joint Kick-off Workshop with the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History
Using contemporary published and archival sources, this paper tells the story of one legal case in Mandate Palestine, using it to examine the relationships and tensions between environmental law in the British Empire and that in Britain; between law in action and law on the books; between private law and public law regulation of the environment; between traditional law (the Mejelle) and modern law (regulatory statutes); between centralized control and local regulation; between Mandate officialdom and local residents; divisions among officials (judges, health officials, and industry regulators) and divisions among local residents (Jews and Arabs, capitalists and socialists, professionals and politicians); and tensions between liberal and public-interest ideologies and rhetoric. It reveals not only the gaps between the extensive regulatory powers of the Mandate government and their use in practice, as well as between judicial rhetoric and decisions and results on the ground, but also surprising coalitions and ideological stances among the various groups involved in the controversy.
It seems that the salience of the Orient for American conservation thought had at least two sources, evident not only in conservationists’ writings, but also in visual art and literature of the period. On the one hand, the importance of biblical and classical sources to American culture and politics made the Orient a natural site of inspiration and precedent; on the other, anxiety over the arid and semi-arid lands of the American West – over whether and how they could be settled, and about how the settling of these lands might affect the American polity – gave the experience of Mediterranean peoples in their environment a relevance that was lacking in more familiar landscapes and practices.
These factors highlight an important aspect of this facet of conservationism. Orientalist conservationists tended to stress the connection between physical environment on the one hand, and political and social life on the other. This strand of American conservation thought is thus significant not only in its own right, but also as a representative of a political conservationism that can be contrasted with both sides of the preservationist-Romantic and conservationist-utilitarian dichotomy.
Yet the Society’s activities, particularly its journal, raise questions about the direction of legal influence in the Empire and the values associated with it. What accounted for the eagerness of those at the heart of the enterprise to learn about and propagate legal developments outside the metropolis, even outside the Empire? Why the emphasis on legislation, in a journal published at the center of the common law? Who were the figures behind the Society, what were their motivations, and how did they go about their work? Based on the extensive record of publications left behind by the Society, and a few surviving unpublished sources, this paper will attempt to answer these questions.