Editors' Summary: With his customary eloquence and intellectual rigor, Prof. Richard Lazarus tracks general trends in the U.S. Supreme Court's approach to environmental law cases and reveals what he claims is a failure of the Justices to appreciate the nature of environmental law to such an extent that they are stifling environmental law making. He analyzes the October Term 2003, during which the Court not only heard a large number of environmental cases but rendered decisions overwhelmingly favorable to those who support less-stringent environmental protection requirements. He concludes with a challenge for more scholarship and effective advocacy to articulate the role federal courts can play in evolving environmental law making. y central thesis is that the vast majority of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent environmental law precedent reflects a lack of appreciation of the special challenges presented by environmental law making. The Court's fundamental failure in this respect has prompted the Court to make a series of mistakes in its rulings both at the jurisdictional stage and on the merits. In deciding whether to accept a case for plenary review, the Court has been too willing to grant petitions filed by parties who claim that environmental protection laws are overreaching, which has led to an unfortunate skewing of the Court's docket. In deciding cases on the merits, the Court has systematically embraced constitutional interpretations and statutory constructions that unduly retard the law's ability to evolve in response to the new information and shifting societal priorities that the nation has embraced in favor of greater environmental protection. This Article is divided into three parts. The first part describes the nature of environmental law making and how it unavoidably serves up a pattern of legal issues that reflects dominant features of the ecosystem, the activities regulated by environmental law, and our law making institutions. The second part seeks to support my thesis that the Court has misapprehended the nature and significance of these legal issues by discussing the environmental law cases before the Court during the October Term 2003. Finally, there is a brief conclusion.