The Most Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court's Dark Journey Through Environmental Law

The Most Dangerous Branch exposes the Supreme Court's unbridled hostility towards environmental programs over the past forty years. In no other field has it been so consistent in ruling against the environmental statutes, agencies, and organizations. In fourteen separate cases, the book describes what was at stake, what the lower courts did, and then their final dismissal, it closes with consideration of why the Court has acted this way, and what might be done about it.

Oliver Houck's latest book on the Supreme Court and environmental law is a true tour de force. No one can match Houck's passion, eloquence, and breadth of expertise as he dissects fifty years of Court rulings that have systematically undermined the nation's ability to protect our natural environment.

Professor Richard Lazarus, Harvard Professor of Law and author of The Rule of Five, a legal history of the Court's climate change opinion, Massachusetts v EPA.

Oliver Houck is one of the most important and influential environmental attorneys in America. He also manages to write not just clearly, but brilliantly. His work has re-shaped many courtrooms, and his words may reshape the way you think.

John Barry, Historian and author of Rising Tide, The Great Influenza, and Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul.

As ill-disposed as the Supreme Court has been toward Civil Rights, as Professor Houck has demonstrated its track record on Environmental Protection is yet worse. The Court's trashing of both Civil and Environmental Rights is not accidental, and will have repercussions for decades to come. One hopes that this book and others will help stem the tide

Lawrence Powell, Professor of History, Tulane University, and author of Troubled Memory: the Holocaust and David Duke's Louisiana.