Article:
Bradley C. Bobertz, Legitimizing Pollution Through Pollution Control Laws: Reflections on Scapegoating Theory, 73 TEX. L. REV. 711 (1995).
 

Abstract:
In studying the growth of federal environmental law, Professor Bobertz asks fundamental questions about the choice of policies: Why as a society have we chosen to control pollution through the particular means we have, and why do we create legal responses to some environmental problems but not to others? Drawing on insights from cultural anthropology, cognitive psychology, and media studies, he offers a “scapegoating” or guilt-redemption theory for the evolution of environmental law. He argues that environmental lawmaking provides an avenue for alleviating what we—both individually and collectively—experience as guilt or shame for ecological problems witnessed through the mythological, good-versus-evil structures of the news media. The guilt-redeeming rituals of environmental lawmaking, he concludes, ultimately create a system that legitimizes pollution through the very laws intended to eliminate it.