Lynton Caldwell has been a key figure in the development of environmental policy in the United States. A longtime advocate for adding an environmental amendment to the Constitution, Caldwell has insisted that the federal government has a duty to protect the environment that is akin to the defense of civil rights or freedom of speech.

Caldwell was born November 21, 1913 in Montezuma, Iowa. He received his bachelor of arts from the University of Chicago in 1935 and completed a master of arts at Harvard University in 1938. The same year, Caldwell accepted an assistant professorship in government at Indiana University in Bloomington. In 1943, he attained his doctorate from the University of Chicago and began publishing academic works the following year. The subjects of his early writings were not environmental; he published a study of administrative theory in...