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.

The investigation and prosecution of environmental crimes has steadily increased over the past decade.¹ Regulatory agencies responsible for overseeing compliance with environmental statutes have become aggressive prosecutors of environmental crimes. This change in posture, first witnessed in the early 1980s, has been contagious and is today evident at all levels of the law enforcement community. For example, in recent years, legislatures have enacted new environmental statutes and strengthened existing ones.

Theory Becomes Practice

Of all the proliferating ideas for reinventing environmental regulation, none are more portentous than those grouped loosely under the heading "civic environmentalism." In a nutshell, such proposa's urge the delegation of crucial decisions and their implementation to grassroots groups of interested parties who would collaborate in the development of creative solutions to the problems that have stymied traditional regulation.¹

A growing number of business, government, and environmental interest groups have concluded that environmental policy in the United States is inadequate to deal with the complexities of environmental protection in the 21st century.

Regional haze and visibility impairment results from particles and gases in the atmosphere scattering and absorbing light.¹ The primary pollutants that affect visibility throughout much of the United States are sulfates and nitrates.² This Dialogue addresses the statutory commands, regulatory programs, and other forces that are likely to drive future regulation of industry in this evolving, highly complex area.

In an effort to address the well-documented and serious problem of environmental justice in the United States, President William J. Clinton issued Executive Order (EO) No. 12898¹ on February 11, 1994. The EO represented the culmination of a century of rapid changes in society's attitudes toward the placement of hazardous facilities in poor, disadvantaged, and minority communities, as well as the denial of services to these communities. This survey examines the impact of the EO on federal agencies.²

Prior to the New Deal, the American judiciary was highly suspicious of regulatory legislation, which was viewed as upsetting the common law's support for private property interests and freedom of contract. Laissez-faire policies reigned. Regulatory statutes were vulnerable to invalidation under a variety of constitutional theories, including substantive due process, federalism and, for a brief period of time, delegating legislative authority to the executive branch, a constitutional offense under separation-of-powers principles.

In recent years, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and Secretary of Commerce have accumulated hundreds of lawsuits challenging fisheries management rules made by the agency. Litigation is not new to these parties; controversy has pervaded fisheries management since the 1976 passage of the primary U.S. fisheries statute—the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson Act).¹ However, the magnitude of litigation has reached historic levels in the years since its 1996 Amendments.