1. It also is hard to reconcile this desire “to take responsibilty for long-term risks” with recent declarations of bankruptcy by those who inflicted the risks, e.g., Johns-Manville with respect to asbetos and William L. Kovacs, head of the Chem-Dyne Corporation of Ohio, for the disposal of toxic waste. With respect to the latter, see Ohio v. Kovacs, 105 S. Ct. 705 (1985). Most recently, A. H. Robins & Co. has filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in order to avoid payments to the thousands of women who were injured while using the Dalkon Shield, which it manufactured. Shiver, Dalkon Shield Company Files for Bankruptcy, L.A. Times, Aug. 22, 1985, pt. 1, at 1.
2. If any side has grounds for paranoia, surely it is the environmentalists. Dr. Beverly Paigen was a research scientist at Roswell Park Memorial Institute, a state-supported cancer research center in Buffalo, She became deeply involved in the Love Canal tragedy, conducting tests on soil samples, counseling the residents, offering guidance and help in epidemiological studies, testifying, and ultimately making public her views on the urgency of the situation. The institute director then ordered her to inform him in advance whenever she intended to address a public meeting or make a speech outside her work hours. She was directed to report all contacts with the press. When she submitted a grant proposal (unrelated to Love Canal) to her boss for routine sign off, the latter already had been contacted by the New York State Commissioner of Health and indicated his disapproval before reading the proposal. She was prohibited from working on a subcontract for a large EPA grant. Mail addressed to her at work was opened before she received it. Finally, she was audited by the New York State Tax Commissioner for the first time in 20 years. When she appeared for her audit, she found that her file was bulging with clippings concerning Love Canal. Levine, supra note 3, at 115–33.
3. Yeats, The Second Coming, in The Faber Book of Modern Verse 58, ed. M. Roberts (3d ed. 1965). Indeed, Douglas and Wildavsky, perhaps unconsciously, almost paraphrase those famous lines: “When the center cannot be counted upon, and the ordinary activities of government cannot be taken for granted, all hell breaks loose” (at 182). I wonder whether there is something about Berkeley that attracts conservatives, or creates them. In an earlier review essay I noted the uncritical admiration for state authority in what ostensibly was a reflection on social change in Africa by Elizabeth Colson (a Berkeley anthropologist). Abel, The Problems of Values in the Analysis of Political Order: Myths of Tribal Society and Liberal Democracy, 16 African L. Stud. 132 (1978) (reviewing E. Colson, Tradition and Contract: The Problem of Order).
4. Elsewhere I have argued that the fascination with informal justice expresses nostalgia for vanishing authority. Abel, The Contradictions of Informal Justice, in R. Abel, ed., 1 The Politics of Informal Justice: The American Experience 267 (1982).