The Land Ethic and Environmental Crime

Abstract

The paper conceptualizes and defines environmental crime from the perspective of Aldo Leopold's land ethic: a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. Highlighted are basic conflicts between this ethic and the dominant themes that shape United States environmen tal law: human dominion over nature, nature as a source of economic opportunity, technology as a means to overcome nature and solve envi ronmental problems, and markets as a means to value nature. These con flicts produce a divergence between environmental harm in fact and envi ronmental harm as conceived in law. Drawing on Edwin Sutherland, con sideration is given to the process through which ethical learning is dif fused through society and impacts on law and compliance. A transformed system is outlined that could close the gap between our current legal approach and that informed by a land ethic.