Becker, Theodore Lewis, and Malcolm Feeley. The Impact of Supreme Court Decisions: Empirical Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.
> An important early empirical study of the policy effects of judicial decisions.
Bickel, Alexander M. The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962.
> The work where the term “counter-majoritarian difficulty,” which describes the notion that judicial decisionmaking lacks democratic legitimacy, was coined.
Bomberg, Elizabeth and David Schlosberg. “US Environmentalism in Comparative Perspective.” Environmental Politics 17, no. 2 (2008): 337-48.
> From a special issue of British journal Environmental Politics focused on American environmental politics (several articles from it have proven relevant for my research – see below).
Bryner, Gary. “Failure and Opportunity for US Environmentalist Groups.” Environmental Politics 17, no. 2 (2008): 319-36.
Cannon, Jonathan Z. “The Significance of Massachusetts v. EPA.” University of Virginia Law Review 93, (2007): 53-62.
> Cannon was EPA General Counsel under President Clinton, so he provides an interesting insider perspective.
Dahl, Robert A. “Decision-Making in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker.” Journal of Public Law 6, no. 279 (1957).
> A classic article and early empirical study questioning the extent to which Supreme Court decisions influence national policy.
Doniger, David. The Law and Policy of Toxic Substances Control. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1978.
Dunlop, Thomas R. Scientists, Citizens, and Public Policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.
Freeman, Jody and Adrian Vermeheule. “Massachusetts v. EPA: From Politics to Expertise” Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 07-08, (2007).
> Really interesting discussion of “expertise-forcing” impact of the MA v. EPA decision. You can find it on SSRN here.
Hamilton, Alexander. The Federalist Papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
> Where Hamilton makes his famous argument that the American judiciary would be the “least dangerous” branch of government.
Horowitz, Donald L. The Courts and Social Policy. Washington: Brookings Institution, 1977.
Kirchick, William. “The Continuing Search for a Constitutionally Protected Environment.” Environmental Affairs 515, no. 4 (1975).
Klyza, Christopher McGrory, and David J. Sousa. American Environmental Policy, 1990-2006: Beyond Gridlock. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008.
Lazarus, Richard. “A Different Kind of ‘Republican Moment’ in Environmental Law.” University of Minnesota Law Review 97, (2003): 999-1036.
———. The Making of Environmental Law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
> The best overview I’ve read of the development of modern American environmental law.
Martens, Allison M. “Reconsidering Judicial Supremacy: From the Counter-Majoritarian Difficulty to Constitutional Transformations.” Perspectives on Politics 5, no. 03 (2007): 447-59.
McCann, Michael W. Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
McCloskey, Robert G., and Sanford Levinson. The American Supreme Court. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Melnick, R. Shep. Regulation and the Courts. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1983.
> An excellent, exhaustively researched analysis of the role of litigation in shaping implementation of the Clean Air Act.
Montesquieu, Charles. The Spirit of the Laws. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
O’Leary, Rosemary. Environmental Change: Federal Courts and the EPA. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993.
> Also very comprehensively researched, this work examines the role of litigation in shaping EPA policy across a range of environmental issue areas.
Rosenberg, Gerald N. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2008.
> Analyzes the role of litigation in advancing social change across a series of issue areas. Takes a generally skeptical position about litigation’s usefulness, sparking a wide debate.
———. “Positivism, Interpretivism and the Study of the Law.” Law & Social Inquiry 21, (1996): 235-55.
> Very interesting contribution to a running methodological debate with Michael McCann.
Scheingold, Stuart A. The Politics of Rights: Lawyers, Public Policy, and Political Change. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974.
Schwartz, Bernard. The Warren Court: A Retrospective. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Sive, David. “Some Thoughts of an Environmental Lawyer in the Wilderness of Administrative Law.” Columbia Law Review 70, no. 612 (1970).
Wenner, Lettie. The Environmental Decade in Court. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.
> A quantitative look at the success rate of environmental litigation in the 1970s.
Whittington, Keith E. “Political Supports for the Exercise of Judicial Review by the United States Supreme Court.” American Political Science Review 99, no. 04 (2005): 583-96.
> Argues that the “counter-majoritarian difficulty” is often overstated, since judicial review can help forward political agendas of officials at a lower cost of political capital.