Legal requirements for social impact assessment: Assessing the social science fallout from Three Mile Island

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Abstract
The passage of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) has been followed by a long series of judicial decisions clarifying and defining the applicability of the statute. Throughout the 1970s, most of these decisions indicated a relatively broad if not expanding view of NEPA's implications. Nevertheless, in a key decision—Metropolitan Edison Co. v. People Against Nuclear Energy (PANE)— the Supreme Court ruled that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was not required to issue an environmental impact statement before restarting the undamaged nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island. The verdict was interpreted by many as narrowing NEPA's requirements for agencies to consider the social science implications of their activities; others saw the verdict merely as reaffirming the existing regulations of the Council on Environmental Quality that social and economic impacts by themselves do not require the preparation of an environmental impact statement. The article reviews the PANE decision, the legal commentaries on that decision, and the several years’ worth of additional case law that led up to the PANE decision and has accumulated since that time. The net result is a comprehensive analysis of the current cognizability or legal relevance of social science concepts in environmental impact statements.

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