Editors' Summary: Every year since the advent of modern environmental law, the U.S. Supreme Court has been called on to resolve controversies surrounding a variety of subjects, such as hazardous waste cleanup, water pollution, air pollution, water rights, mining claims, and land use. And every year, the Court seems to decide one or more environmental or environmentally related cases that significantly affect the field of environmental law. The Court's 1997-1998 Term was no different.

Editors' Summary: The ESA is simultaneously the most popular and most hated of environmental statutes. Conservationists fervently support the ESA's mission of preventing the extinction of our country's fish, wildlife, and plants, but private landowners subject to ESA restrictions claim that the Act unfairly and illogically restricts the use of their valuable property. As the agency with primary responsibility for the ESA's administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is caught between both sides.

Editors' Summary: Although there were several distractions for the U.S. Supreme Court to handle this Term, the Court managed to stay focused and perform its role as the highest power of the Judicial Branch. The Court's environmental docket for the 1998-1999 Term was slower than some previous Terms, but the Court still played an integral role in shaping environmental law. This Term, the Court issued opinions in 6 environmental or environmentally related cases, and denied review in over 40 such cases.

For trial lawyers and judges, the U.S. Supreme Court's "Daubert Four"—four unanimous decisions since 1993, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.,¹ General Electric Co. v. Joiner,² Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael,³ and Weisgram v.

In recent years, lawmakers of all sorts have become interested in scientific peer review, and have the hope that scrutiny by independent experts can improve the quality of their own decisionmaking. As the phrase implies, peer review refers to the process of having work scrutinized by fellow experts, and it has long served as a quality control mechanism for the scientific community.

If a value system is simply presupposed and obeyed as the given structure of the world that all are made to accept and serve, it can become systematically destructive without our knowing there is a moral choice involved.¹

An important battle is currently taking place over the future direction of environmental enforcement in the United States. The conflict is in part between businesses and government; more fundamentally, however, it is between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the states. EPA's vision of effective enforcement is one grounded in deterrence, the theory that generally underlies societal efforts to control unlawful behavior. Many states, by contrast, have been shifting to a more conciliatory, cooperation-oriented approach.

Shades of the 1950s! People are worried about "urban sprawl."¹ Shades of the 1970s! People are worried about energy prices.² And they are even beginning to realize once again that there is a connection.³ Will we be any more successful in resolving these issues now than we were a generation or two ago? Do advances in technology give us reason for optimism?

Introduction

Sometimes new notions capture our fancy, resonate to some element of our experience, and color the way we see the world. The concept of a post-industrial society is just such a notion. It gives voice to our experience of big changes, shapes our perceptions of their tone and texture, and organizes our understanding of their direction. But the notion obscures the precise location of those changes and their meanings.¹

Environmental laws seem to face, in the Rehnquist Court, a situation like that old silent movie serial "The Perils of Pauline." Environmental laws hardly ever seem to have even a single U.S.