The Brazilian Legal Tradition and Environmental Protection: Friend or Foe

Authors

Janelle E. Kellman

Abstract

Brazil is home to almost forty-two percent of the area known worldwide as the Amazon basin. Despite its tremendous beauty and ecological richness, the Amazon forest is being destroyed at an unprecedented rate. Legal historians and international scholars have argued that the controversy surrounding the Amazon has stemmed from conflicting economic uses of the forest. Economics, however, is only one piece of the puzzle that accounts for the massive destruction of the rainforest and its surrounding ecosystem. Brazil has a complex set of environmental regulations and statutes. This Article examines how Brazilian legal culture and society have made it virtually impossible for these laws to succeed.

Recommended Citation

Janelle E. Kellman, The Brazilian Legal Tradition and Environmental Protection: Friend or Foe, 25 Hastings Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 145 (2002).
Available at: https://repository.uclawsf.edu/hastings_international_comparative_law_review/vol25/iss2/2