Citation:
The Limits of Law: The Public Regulation of Private Pollution, Peter Cleary Yeager, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 351 pp.
The Limits of Law: The Public Regulation of Private Pollution is an examination of the regulation of water quality. The author asserts that the present method would be improved upon if social and legal regulation were to be integrated.
The Limits of Law: The Public Regulation of Private Pollution will be of interest to those who seek to broaden their understanding of the social and legal regulation of water quality. The first chapter is an examination of the social production of business offenses. This is accomplished by an analysis of business offenses and consideration of the legal regulation of industrial water pollution. The second chapter proposes an integrated approach to water pollution regulation. Yeager offers a critical perspective on, and a structural model of, social regulation. The author also states that the task of the remainder of the book is to compare the application of industrial water pollution law to the theoretical framework presented in the second chapter . Yeager states that "... my analysis focuses on institutional and organizational relations that link state and economy." That is, the author assesses current regulations on the basis of degree of integration of social andlegal regulation.
The third chapter addresses the politics of water; specifically pollution policies prior to 1970. The fourth chapter considers contradictions in policy and economy. Further, the author asserts that the social action which has been referred to as the environmental movement arose out of "... the evolving class structure and the experience of the earlier social conflicts of the 1950s and 1960s." The author credits this new consciousness as the driving force behind the mobilization of the law for protection of environmental quality. Chapter five addresses the process of legislating clean water in light of our changing conceptions of environmental rights. In this context, Yeager discusses the politics of law and the congressional debates which preceded the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972.
Chapter six addresses the transition from law to the writing of regulations. Herein, the author examines: the requirements of rule-making, the relationship among science, politics and the law, and the impacts of law and the rigor of regulations. The next chapter, on enforcement, examines the social production of environmental offenses. Yeager considers water quality enforcement at the EPA In this context he presents a study of the EPA's Region II. From an examination of structural bias in regulatory law the author concludes that environmental regulatory law "... systematically both reflects and reproduces the inequality of the social system of which it is a part." He asserts that these conclusions require a restructuring of the content and the enforcement of regulatory laws rather than simple deregulation. This chapter is followed by two appendices the first of which details the methodological issues in the author's study. The second appendix offers tables showing regression coefficients for models. The final chapter examines the relationship among ecology, economy and the evolution of limits. Herein, the author addresses the limits of: the law, rationality, and the environment.
The Limits of Law: The Public Regulation of Private Pollution is a systematic examination of the current approach to the regulation of water quality and a proposal for an integrated approach which would retain the effectiveness of legal regulation and add the benefits of social regulation.