NEPA at 19: A Primer on an "Old" Law With Solutions to New Problems
Editors' Summary: Exactly 20 years ago this month, in February 1969, Senator Henry Jackson (D-Wash.) and Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) introduced draft legislation that led the way to the ultimate enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act. A product of the growing environmental consciousness of American society during the 1960s, NEPA was Congress' first modern environmental law, and it set the tone for the complex superstrucure of federal environmental law that was to follow.