Article ID: CBB000932653

From Corporatism to Citizen Oversight: The Legal Fight over California Redwoods, 1970--1996 (2009)

unapi

The California redwoods have long been the subject of conflict, but after 1970 the fights were transformed when citizens leveraged the courts to challenge California's corporatist timber regime, with its focus on timber production. The history of the legal campaign highlights the need to focus on local aspects of modern environmental history. Unlike the typical narrative about the nationalization and professionalization of modern environmental politics, the redwood battles reveal persistent insurgence, intense local activism, and the breakdown of a corporatist, production-focused governance tradition. The history of the legal fights over the redwoods also points to the national consequences, most of them unintended, of the local activism. The current literature prioritizes litigation efforts that enforced and clarified particular aspects of the modern environmental protection regime, not litigation that transformed governance. This essay focuses on the eight most important cases in the movement to reform California forestry governance. Because the local citizens' movement set its sights on the transformation of institutions, increased regulation of private property, and giant redwoods, it led to, and was part of, one of the most important environmental battles of the late twentieth century.

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Authors & Contributors
Squatriti, Paolo
Diego Molina
Farmer, Jared
Siscawati, Mia
Sigurmundsson, Friðρór S.
Paul, Alistair
Concepts
Trees
Forests and forestry
Environmental history
Political activists and activism
Environmental protection
Environmentalism
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
21st century
19th century
Medieval
Ancient
Places
United States
California (U.S.)
Italy
New York (U.S.)
Los Angeles (California)
Bogotá (Colombia)
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