Judge Alfred T. Goodwin offers book review of Nature’s Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age by University of Oregon Professor Mary Christina Wood

Goodwin, Hon. Alfred T. *
Book Review:  A Wake-Up Call For Judges
2015 Wis. L. Rev. 785 (2015).

“Proliferating international demand for American petro-chemical exports and soaring prices for compressed natural gas will soon produce a critical mass of litigation over the rights of the people of the United States versus the corporate capital now being invested in fracturing shale. If the horizontal drilling to execute fracking is indeed poisoning the water needed to sustain human life on the land above the fracking, plaintiffs who have standing will find lawyers and sue in their state and federal courts.

Professor Mary Christina Wood of the University of Oregon School of Law has recently authored an important and well-researched book explaining how common-law lawyers can bring about needed change by activating the third branch of a government whose other two branches have shown no interest in taking on new work: Nature’s Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age.”

*Circuit Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.