The theme this month is “everything green,” so I initially thought I would highlight the EPA web site. But that particular web site, despite all the current controversy around the closing of physical EPA libraries, is extremely extensive. Therefore, it is difficult to do a thorough evaluation of its strengths and weaknesses.

Instead, I am going to highlight some excellent Environmental Law pathfinders that are hosted on the Internet. Most of these guides come from law school libraries. The pathfinders include materials from the law libraries themselves, plus fee based services available through these libraries, and often include some nifty web sites for finding environmental law resources.

Let’s start with the excellent pathfinder from the University of Maryland’s School of Law, Thurgood Marshall Law Library.
This guide is divided into categories under a basic Environmental Law heading, including such subheadings as Animal welfare and animal rights, Chesapeake bay resources, Clean water, Endangered species,  Environmental justice, and more. The guide includes links to associations and organizations concerned with the environment, links to other environmental guides, plus some of the best “deep links” into the EPA web site itself. These “deep links” help considerably when you are looking for the materials hosted on the EPA web site.

A second pathfinder is the one found at the Washburn University School of Law (Washlaw) web site at. This guide includes annotations of some of its links, plus a list of email discussion groups on various aspects of environmental law. Its primary law links take you to the Cornell web site’s version of the US Code, a favorite site I have discussed often here in my column.

Southern Methodist University has an interesting writing course “Guide to Sources on Environmental Law” for 2007 at, which highlights many of the library’s in-house only accessible resources, but also includes free web site links to governmental and non-profit web sites. I like this guide’s current awareness, web-based journals and other interesting links that are not included in some of the other guides.

A last one I will include is the Boston University’s Law Library’s Environmental Law guide. This guide’s main attraction is its basic explanation for doing legal research – including the caveat to remember that there are three branches of government that make law. If you have somehow forgotten that (which I highly doubt), this guide walks you through the process of doing environmental legal research in a clear, easy to follow manner. It includes the links you most need to do this type of research. While it doesn’t include “deep links” like the University of Maryland pathfinder, it does include a link to the Maryland guide itself.

There are many more law school library pathfinders available, but these four will get you most of the best environmental law links you need.

I don’t want to forget the main theme of this month’s bar bulletin though, so how about a “deep link” to the EPA’s Guide on Green Cars? Check out the Prius – as I am proud to say I own one. It has the highest overall rating of the green vehicles you can buy, an air pollution score of 9.5 (the best is 10), and a greenhouse gas score of 10 – also the best a vehicle can receive.

So go green and check out some of these pathfinders and guides. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to give the King County Law Library a call at: 206-296-0940, or go to our web site at www.kcll.org and ask your question there.