Justifying environmental regulation

Typically, state intervention in the market is justified on public interest objectives which tend to be confined to circumstances where intervention is needed to correct some deficiency in the market or to re-distribute a benefit or burden. Recently, there also has been pressure to intervene in the market in the name of environmental justice and other environmental principles. The aim of this paper is to consider the correlation between these two sets of public interest objectives. It begins by examining how the market with the support of both the criminal and private law allocates goods and services and how in certain circumstances this allocation is not in line with the public interest. Next, it specifically considers the drawbacks of the market system in securing environmental protection. The conventional 'public interest' grounds used to correct these deficiencies are then considered in the context of environmental justice.