Wolves, Courts, and Public Policy

The Children of the Night Return to the Northern Rocky Mountains

By (author) Edward A. Fitzgerald

Not available to order

Publication date:

10 February 2015

Length of book:

260 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498502689

This book examines the reintroduction and recovery of the wolf in the Northern Rocky Mountains. The wolf was driven to brink of extinction through conscious government policy. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 provided the means for wolf’s return, which began in the Carter administration and continues in the Obama administration. The battle over the wolf is part of a larger struggle over the management of public lands, generating public law litigation. Interest groups brought suit in federal courts, challenging the Department of Interior’s implementation of policy. The federal courts were required to interpret the statutory mandates and review Interior’s decisions to insure statutory compliance. The analysis of this public law litigation demonstrates that the federal courts correctly interpreted the statutory mandates and properly supported and checked Interior’s decisions.
This book focuses on the controversial role of the courts in the resolution of public policy conflicts. Judicial skeptics argue that the courts should not get involved in complex public policy disputes as Judges lack the expertise and information to make informed decisions. Judicial proponents, by contrast, argue that judicial involvement is necessary so Federal courts can oversee federal agencies, which are under conflicting pressure from interest groups, the President, Congress, and their own internal dynamics. This book supports the conclusions of judicial proponents and points out that the federal courts have been instrumental in the return and recovery of the wolf to the Northern Rocky Mountains.
Few Endangered Species Act (ESA) species reintroductions have been as controversial as that of the gray wolf. Sweeping in scope, rich in details, this volume offers the first comprehensive chronological review of gray wolf reintroduction and recovery in the northern Rocky Mountains. This incisive analysis of the efficacy and impact of public law litigation provides a superb tool for anyone—students, professors, wildlife managers, individuals—working within the public law sector. An eminent environmental law expert, Fitzgerald begins by examining the role of the US courts in resolving public policy issues and the powerful nexus of science, policy, and politics that took the gray wolf from extirpation to recovery. Ensuing chapters offer accounts of each successive presidential administration’s interpretation of public law for this species and elucidate how western states' opposition to federal wolf policy enabled politics to prevail over science. Fitzgerald's penetrating insights on agency and court responses to challenging concepts such as taxonomical issues, the distinct population segment concept, and the congressional delisting of this species via an appropriations rider illustrate that this compelling book goes beyond wolves—it is about the battle over the ESA. Summing Up: Essential. All readers.