I once had an environmental reporter from the New York Times tell me that he thought Jon was “scary smart,” and I understand why.  He is one of the most cited legal scholars in environmental law, but with a decided unconventional (that is, non-liberal or non-statist) point of view that emphasizes decentralization, local knowledge, and property rights in preference to bureaucratic control of resources.  A 2007 study identified Adler as the most cited legal academic in environmental law under age 40, and his recent article “Money or Nothing: The Adverse Environmental Consequences of Uncompensated Land Use Controls,” published in the Boston College Law Review, was selected as one of the ten best articles in land use and environmental law in 2008.

To my mind his most notable original contribution to a revisionist understanding of the environment is his article “Fables of the Cuyahoga: Reconstructing a History of Environmental Protection,” which offers a iconoclastic history and analysis of the famous Cuyahoga River fire of 1969.  I quote the abstract in full:

On June 22, 1969, just before noon, an oil slick and assorted debris under a railroad trestle on the Cuyahoga River caught fire. The fire attracted national media attention, and helped prompt the passage of federal environmental laws. A river on fire was a symbol of earth in need of repair, and federal regulation was the reparative tool of choice. Much of the Cuyahoga story is mythology, however, a fable with powerful symbolic force. The river did burn in 1969 – as it and other rivers had burned many times before – and today the Cuyahoga and many U.S. rivers are far less polluted. But so much else of what we “know” about the 1969 fire is simply not so. The conventional narratives, of a river abandoned by its local community, of water pollution at its zenith, of conventional legal doctrines impotent in the face of environmental harms, and of a beneficent federal government rushing in to save the day, is misleading in many respects. This paper revisits the context and history of the legendary Cuyahoga River fire to reveal a more complex story about the causes and consequences of various institutional choices in environmental law. The aim is to provide additional perspective to the questions of institutional choice which underlie environmental policy, and to suggest that the decision to reallocate primary authority over water quality to the federal government was neither inevitable nor an unmitigated blessing.

You can read Jon regularly at the Volokh Conspiracy (maybe the best law blog in the country, whose entire roster of contributors may require a group listing on the Power Line 100).  For some reason he doesn’t get a “hotness” rating at RateMyProfessors.com, which seems clearly an oversight.  What’s the matter with students these days anyway?  Are they intimidated by “lookism” or something?

If you have the time, you can take in Jon in this hour-long talk explaining his environmental viewpoint with his typical cogency:

The question now facing the Beretta Holding companies in Maryland is this: What effect will the passage of this law–and the efforts of Maryland government officials to support its passage–have on our willingness to remain in this State?

In that respect we are mindful of two objectives: We will not let passage of this legislation prevent us from providing on-time delivery of our products to our U.S. Armed Forces and other important customers. We also will not go forward in a way that compounds the insult made to our Maryland employees by their Governor and by the legislators who supported his efforts.

Prior to introduction of this legislation the three Beretta Holding companies located in Maryland were experiencing growth in revenues and jobs and had begun expansion plans in factory and other operations. The idea now of investing additional funds in Maryland, thus rewarding a Government that has insulted our customers and our products, is offensive to us so we will take steps to evaluate such investments in other States. At the same time, we will continue our current necessary operations within Maryland and we are thankful for and welcome the continued support of our employees as we do so.

Texas reportedly has been courting Beretta. Other states, too, would no doubt welcome the company’s high-quality jobs. Beretta might even consider Minnesota: our legislature, despite the fact that it is Democrat-controlled, squelched similarly mindless anti-gun legislation earlier this year. Minnesota is probably just about as liberal a state as Maryland; the difference is that we have a lot more hunters.

Via InstaPundit.

Nixon’s alleged abuse of the IRS seems to have gone largely unrequited. Note the careful use of the word “endeavored.” It appears to be the operative term.

Turning to Stanley Kutler’s history of Watergate, I find that Kutler devotes remarkably few pages to the issue. Nixon’s efforts with the IRS seem pathetically futile. Robert Haldeman is said to have selected a number of people on various enemies’ lists “for audits and other forms of harassment.”

But who was audited? Kutler mention only Washington Post attorney Edward Bennett Williams, who was audited for three years running. An IRS office (the Special Services Staff), created in 1969 at the urging of Tom Huston, is said to have “compiled information on more than 1,000 institutions and 4,000 individuals.” Kutler makes no mention of anything having been done with the information.

Kutler observes that the White House worked hard on IRS Commissioner Johnnie Walters to make him subservient to political needs. Nixon henchman Jack Caulfield astutely complained, however, that the IRS was a “monstrous bureaucracy…dominated and controlled by Democrats.” Kutler doesn’t say it, but the Nixon administration’s efforts with Walters appear to have gone approximately nowhere.

Nixon himself had been the subject of what he believed to have been politically inspired audits in 1961 and 1962. He told John Ehrlichman in 1972 that he had not pursued his opponents with audits because he had “no mandate.” Things would be different in the second term, Nixon promised.

The index for “IRS” in Kutler’s book reveals concisely how it turned out in Nixon’s second term. “Search for politically pliable Commissioner,” reads the subhead. “Not successful,” reads the sub-subhead. Compared with Obama’s accomplishments in this department, it’s almost funny.

Which is true, I think, as far as it goes. But what if all of the current Obama scandals had broken last fall? What if voters not only knew the truth about Benghazi–that four Americans were killed by al Qaeda because the Obama administration ignored repeated warnings from the CIA, refused the ambassador’s pleas for better security, and failed even to try to rescue them once they came under attack–but also knew that the IRS had been commissioned to harass the administration’s political opponents? And what if, in addition, reporters knew about DOJ’s surveillance of the Associated Press?

We know that the administration fought feverishly to prevent the truth about Benghazi from coming out until after the election. That is what the notorious talking points, Susan Rice’s tour of the TV news shows, and Obama’s and Clinton’s endless references to the phantom video were all about. We also know that the IRS’s improper activities were well known at the upper reaches of the IRS as well as the Treasury Department–and, it is fair to assume, at the White House–well before the election. Yet numerous officials conspired to keep the scandal quiet until the election was safely past, and at least one IRS employee seems rather clearly to have committed perjury to keep the scandal from coming to the attention of voters. As for the AP surveillance, I still don’t understand the legal context of the incident, and I doubt that many voters would have been swayed by the apparently legal, but unprecedented, surveillance of reporters. But what if reporters had been angry enough over the administration’s double-cross (as they might reasonably see it) that their coverage of the campaign’s closing weeks had been less slavishly pro-Obama? Might these factors, together, have made a difference?

I still don’t think the result would have been different. To an extraordinary degree, the 2012 electorate seemed uninterested in the Obama administration’s failures. If voters didn’t care about the economy or about $16 trillion in debt, why would they have cared about Benghazi or the IRS? But the cumulative effect of multiple, mutually reinforcing scandals is hard to predict. It is easy to understand why, last fall, the Obama administration didn’t want to take any chances. They went into full cover-up mode, and carried off their multiple cover-ups successfully. Without doubt, that effort helped to bring about the president’s re-election.

The analogy to 1972 is obvious. Richard Nixon managed to keep the lid on Watergate long enough to enjoy one of the most sweeping electoral victories in American history. After the election, however, his cover-up unraveled; it consumed, and eventually destroyed, his second term. Whether the same will happen to Obama remains to be seen, but already it is clear that scandal will be a major part of the Obama legacy.