Henry Manne’s subtle but important influences on environmental law

Abstract

Henry Manne had little to say about environmental law and policy. Yet he had a significant impact on the approach that others took to those topics. These indirect influences on environmental law and policy were threefold. His creation at George Mason University of a highly successful, specialized, law school curriculum demonstrated that law schools could not only survive, but thrive with a subject-matter or methodological focus. His central role in introducing economics to the law school curriculum had a significant and lasting impact on legal education in general and environmental law in particular. And his study and advocacy of markets as effective institutions for the allocation of scarce resources has contributed to the development of environmental law and policy, notwithstanding a predisposition among environmentalists and government officials for a command and control approach.