The Art of Environmental Law

If your senses require a break from the quotidian bad news about our planet, I recommend this delightful book about beauty and environmental law. -- David Takacs, University of California Hastings College of the Law * Transnational Environmental Law * Few law books have as many illustrations as this one, few draw together so many disparate strands and few inspire the reader to reflect as thoroughly on how deeply the way we think and act, and therefore how the law is shaped, is affected by perceptions of which we are usually at best only half-aware. It makes a persuasive case for paying more attention to aesthetics in thinking about the law. -- Colin T Reid, University of Dundee * Scottish Planning and Environmental Law * This is a work of both breadth and detail, and in producing it Richardson blends the vision of a landscape artist with the focus of a miniature painter … The Art of Environmental Law truly is an impressive work … This is a book that will support multiple readings, for its richness is lost in a single turn through its pages. -- Emily Barritt * Journal of Environmental Law * Benjamin Richardson’s The Art of Environmental Law is a fascinating overview that is remarkably readable despite its considerable length. Indeed, its greatest strength is its interdisciplinarity. Richardson draws on studies of environmental law and landscape management, biodiversity conservation, museum practices, advertising, ecotourism, environmental restoration, land art, and environmental activism, as well as philosophical environmental aesthetics. The result is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the many different avenues through which aesthetic values, broadly construed, can enter into the development and application of environmental law … For those working in the field, Richardson’s call for the development of more effective means of adjudicating aesthetic disputes will be a welcome endorsement of the practical value of philosophical contributions to environmental aesthetics and conservation. -- Jennifer Welchman * Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism *