This month's issue of ELR contains a reprint of a chapter from NEPA in the Courts: A Legal Analysis of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.¹ The study, which is the first book-length analysis of NEPA, was written by Frederick R. Anderson, ELR's editor-in-chief and Executive Director of the Environmental Law Institute. NEPA in the Courts examines the judicial interpretations of NEPA to date. It draws its structure from the issues raised in litigation, including the role of reviewing courts, the scope of NEPA's applicability to federal agencies and categories of programs, the quality of agency procedural compliance, access to information, and NEPA's substantive obligations. Legal issues that have arisen in connection with the courts' interpretations of §102(2)(c), the impact statement requirement, receive detailed analysis.

Because of the wide reach of the Act's mandate, legal issues raised primarily by citizens groups have given the courts a major role in shaping NEPA's meaning. The book brings these cases together in delineating the contours and boundaries of the Act. In introducing NEPA in the Courts, Joseph L. Fisher, President of Resources for the Future, said: