Beauty and the Beast Within: On the Special Nature of Natural World Law

We are here to celebrate Professor Rodgers and his life in environmental law. As it happens, they grew up together. The new notion of environmental protection gave Bill the chance of his lifetime, to which he returned his full energies, ideas, and writings. In a world of failed relationships, this one was a howling success. Although we have not seen each other more than twice in forty years, I feel a kinship with Bill that seems particularly close. The link is not simply our ages, nor our passion for environmental law, nor even the activism in which both of us seem to be constantly embroiled. Rather, it is the particular kind of environmental law that brought us into the field and that, even today, gets us up in the morning, engines running, ready to go. In our hearts, we are driven by the natural world