Risk in the Republic

The Cummings Colloquia on Environmental Law at Duke University were launched in 1996 by a generous gift in honor of Jasper L. Cummings, Jr., and by the leadership of Dean Norman L. Christensen of Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Dean Pamela B. Gann of Duke Law School. The mission of these annual Colloquia is simple but ambitious: to bring together diverse disciplines to confront the most difficult intellectual and practical challenges in environmental law and policy. The first of the Cummings Colloquia, held in April 1996, addressed the challenge posed to environmental law by the “new ecology”: the rejection by ecologists of the static “balance of nature” equilibrium paradigm, and its replacement with a new non-equilibrium paradigm in which nature is seen as perpetually in flux. The second Cummings Colloquium, held in November 1996, is the subject of this symposium issue. At this gathering we examined the growing importance of comparing risks as the basis for setting