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What, is truly "environmental" about environmental law? This Article is the first attempt to answer this question by integrating Law & Literature scholarship with the study of environmental law. I argue that competing narratives of nature and culture common to the American environmental imagination play a more significant role in environmental law and litigation than previously acknowledged. These competing narratives, communicated through a known set of environmental stories and tropes, are used by attorneys to establish, frame, narrate and argue their cases, and they are absorbed, reimagined, reframed and retold by judges in their written opinions, making environmental law a kind of expressive, literary event. To illustrate this process, the Article examines two important and highly visible case studies: the reintroduction of gray wolves into the Northern Rocky Mountains and the public nuisance climate change lawsuit that culminated in the Supreme Court's decision in Connecticut v. American Electric Power. A close reading of the pleadings, legal briefs and judicial opinions in these case studies demonstrates that courts respond to and reinforce traditional environmental stories, such as wilderness tales and the environmental apocalyptic, but evince a strong preference for a less well-known story, which I call the Progressive Management Machine. The Progressive Management Machine promises reconciliation of competing environmental narratives through administrative process and science-driven decision making, but, in so doing, masks its own contravention of those same narratives. The approach developed here launchesa larger project exploring the dynamic relationship between environmental law, literature and narrative. This Article, like the larger project, seeks to elucidate not only various litigators' and judges' rhetorical strategies but also the purposes, content and significance of environmental law.

Federal and Virginia courts and legislatures acted on a wide variety of environmental issues and topics in the June 1995 to June 1996 period. This article reviews the key environmental developments at the federal and state level from that period involving air, water, waste, Superfund, wetlands, and environmentally related constitutional, land use, and property tort law.

In the past two years Virginia has seen significant legislative changes in its laws protecting public health and the environment. This article addresses not only those changes, but also the implementation of these laws by the responsible state agencies and the court cases construing those laws.

This article addresses selected developments in environmental law occurring between the publication of the 1992 Annual Survey of Virginia Law1 and June 24, 1994. Due to significant federal litigation since publication of the 1992 Survey, this article places primary emphasis on those developments which most significantly affect potential liabilities under state and federal environmental laws. This article addresses developments in the federal and state legislative and regulatory schemes, and case law from Virginia state courts, the United States District Courts for the Eastern and Western Districts of Virginia, the United States Courts of Appeals for the District of Columbia and Fourth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court.

This article summarizes federal and state environmental developments occurring in, or potentially affecting, the Commonwealth of Virginia during the period of June 1998 to June 2000. Legislative, regulatory, and judicial developments are included.

This article reviews the key environmental developments at the federal and state levels during the period from June 1996 to June 1998. Legislation and judicial decisions are presented topically. Certain issues, such as public participation and environmental justice, are playing an increasing role and will likely impact all media.