Environmental Law Research Guide

Most laws with an environmental focus are codified in the U.S. Code or in a state's statutory compilation. Using an annotated code will make your statutory research much more efficient, as the annotations will provide citations to other primary legal authorities that cite to the section of the code you are referencing. Westlaw and Lexis both publish annotated versions of the U.S. Code. 

Sometimes an environmental law will be cited to using its popular name (e.g., "The Clean Water Act," or "The Endangered Species Act") instead of the U.S. Code citation. You can find where those acts were codified by using a popular name tool.

For statutory research at the state-level, 50-state surveys can be extremely useful. These surveys identify and compare laws on certain topics across jurisdictions.

You will sometimes need to review and analyze the history of a statute, which is accomplished through compiling a legislative history. Many enacted federal and state laws have precompiled legislative histories. At the state level, check the legislature's or state law library's website for information about legislative histories. At the federal level, you can check for precompiled legislative histories across a number of resources.

Most environmental statutes delegate authority to various administrative agencies for implementation and enforcement. Agencies carry out that responsibility through promulgating regulations. These regulations are published in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), which is divided into numbered titles and parts. Most environmental regulations are found in Title 40 of the CFR. 

Agencies promulgate regulations through a process called "notice-and-comment rulemaking." During this process, proposed rules are published in the Federal Register where they are open to comments from the general public. The Federal Register is published daily Monday through Friday (except for federal holidays) and, aside from proposed rules, also contains final rules, agency notices, and presidential documents. 

You can trace the history of a federal regulation using the tools mentioned above. You can also access select compiled regulatory histories through ProQuest.

Administrative agencies publish much of their material on their website. Examples include administrative law judge orders and decisions, appeals board decisions, administrative guidance, FAQs, and information on regional offices. Additionally, some of these documents are available on Lexis and Westlaw.

Case law is an important component of environmental law research, as courts are frequently tasked with interpreting environmental statutes and regulations, as well as resolving disputes with environmental impacts. You can use the usual legal research databases to conduct case law searches using Westlaw's Key Numbers, Lexis' Topics, annotated codes, and citators. Additionally, CLS affiliates can track ongoing environmental litigation using Bloomberg Law's Dockets tool.