Section 102 of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) contains a broad mandate to apply the policies of §101 on an international plane. I explored these concepts initially on assignment as a member of the Legal Advisory Committee to the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) in 1969-1971, and published the analysis in 1974, after that Committee wound up its business.

After several judicial decisions confirmed that NEPA's environmental impact assessment (EIA) provisions in §102(2(C ) applied to actions outside the territorial United States, the CEQ under President Ronald W. Reagan studied and restated the international scope of federal EIA.