Recommended Citation
William H. Rodgers, Jr., The Lesson of the Owl and the Crows: The Role of Deception in the Evolution of the Environmental Statutes, 4 J. Land Use & Envtl. L. 377 (1989), https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-articles/263
Publication Title
Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law
Keywords
fakery
Document Type
Article
Abstract
In this world of strategies and counterstrategies, the advantages of the good fake are not to be overlooked. Fakery is an indelible part of the landscape in settings where we readily accept the gaming metaphor—sporting events are the obvious examples. But I wish to emphasize how fakery and deception can play an important role in legal interactions as well, particularly in the writing of the environmental statutes. Environmental lawyers often are fond of borrowing examples from natural history to illustrate propositions of law. There is more to this practice than habit, it seems to me, because the natural laws of evolution contain lessons in the results of competitive struggle that fit closely the experiences of legal gameplaying.
[Delivered as a lecture at Florida State University College of Law, Feb. 25, 1988.]