U.S. nanotechnology policy and the decay of environmental law, 1980--2005

Environmental law's authority to protect humans and the environment from pollution and resource exploitation began to deteriorate in the early 1980s. The dissertation is a modest attempt to answer the question, "What caused the gradual erosion in environmental law's normative authority?" It argues that the emergence of a neoliberal, market-centered ideology redefined the relationship between economic and environmental policies, causing environmental law's transformation into an instrument of economic discourse. This ethical transformation weakened environmental law's authority to protect humans and the environment from risks posed by unbridled economic growth policies. It also sparked the rise of an ideology to counter neoliberalism's power over environmental policy: sustainable development or "sustainability." Sustainable development reaffirms environmental law's normative authority and relies upon deliberative democratic principles similar to those that drove the enactment of environmental legislation during the 1960s and 1970s.;The dissertation analyzes environmental law's transformation through two complementary case studies. First, it shows how the expansion of regulatory agencies' legislative power has combined with cost-benefit analysis mandates to undermine the goals of environmental law and limit democratic debate about environmental policy. Second, it analyzes the genesis and development of nanotechnology policy in the United States to show how neoliberalism's economic logic subtly erodes environmental law's normative authority. These case studies illuminate pragmatic differences in substance and process between neoliberalism and sustainable development. They also show that the relative balance of institutional authority over risk-related information determines the effectiveness and durability of legislative mandates intended to protect the environment.