All VLS Courses

Comparative Environmental Law Research Seminar

This seminar is a research and writing seminar that will provide a framework and faculty supervision support for students to engage in comparative environmental law research. While the seminar is designed primarily to support VLS students participating in the US-China joint student research projects and will focus generally on China, the seminar is sufficiently broad to accommodate students interested in researching the environmental law systems of other countries.
Most of the course will focus on helping students design/refine their research project proposals and critiquing their research and draft papers.  However, the seminar will also provide some basic introduction and background on comparative law and methodology, a brief introduction to Chinese law (and possibly other foreign law, depending on student enrollment), and research methods and resources.  Students will learn basic comparative law methodology and research skills related to navigating a foreign legal system and generate a publishable paper at the end of the course.  This course is a two-semester sequence (fall 2-credits, spring 1-credit), though the fall semester may be taken independently.
 
Registration requires approval by the instructors.
There are no pre-requisites for this course. Chinese language proficiency is useful, but not required.
Students selected to participate in the US-China joint research projects for the academic year 2010-2011 are required to take this seminar.

Satisfies perspective requirement.

Ecology of Food and Agriculture

Ecology of Food & Agriculture Ecology of Food/Agri The first part of the course develops several case studies drawn broadly from the science, law, politics, economics and policy of food and agriculture. The first case study asks whether organic foods are healthier than conventionally grown foods. We answer this question by reading and critiquing, just as scientists do, scientific papers that compare the nutrition and toxicity of organic versus conventional produce. To provide structure for this exercise we apply the facts in these papers to the generic framework for critiquing scientific information in Science for Business, Law and Journalism. The second case study investigates the environmental impacts of corn farming, including fossil fuel use and EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested), eutrophication from fertilizer runoff, soil erosion, CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) and impacts of large-scale corn production on rural economies and human social structure.  The third case study is a broad ranging discussion of human ecology, emphasizing the dominant role of agriculture in undeveloped and emerging economies, and overviewing the diverse global ecological impacts of human agricultural activities.
 
The second part of the course entails class discussion of scientific papers on food and agriculture chosen by the students. Each student writes either a term paper or a poster that critiques one specific scientific paper of their choosing. Students have great latitude in choosing the scientific paper they will critique, and the instructor encourages each student to choose a scientific paper relevant to a contemporary legal, political or policy issue. The instructor assists each student in identifying an appropriate scientific paper, and provides lots of individual help to each student as they develop their critique.  Those students writing a term paper lead a class discussion of the scientific paper they are critiquing. The students who write a poster, present it at the Extravaganza, Potluck and Poster Session held in the evening during the last week of the semester.

Thus, although the case studies in this course pertain broadly to food and agriculture, the course also has the broader goals of teaching the student to critically read the scientific literature, and to effectively apply science in diverse legal and political settings.

Students cannot take this course and Ecology offered in the summer.
Non-law Course: See Academic Regulations for limits on non-law credits for JD degree.

Satisfies perspective requirement.
JD/MELP:  Required.
LLM:  Required.
MELP:  Required.

LLM Seminar

This seminar ranges widely over environmental law and policy, exploring diverse advanced topics and viewpoints. On most weeks, a guest speaker will present their scholarship to the seminar. These guests will include off-campus visitors and VLS faculty and advanced students. These guests will bring cutting-edge scholarship and ideas to the seminar, sparking vigorous discussion of the leading environmental law and policy issues of our day.

The LL.M. Seminar is required for LL.M. candidates, and is also open to post-J.D. MELP candidates, at the discretion of the Director of the ELC.  Moreover, some of the seminars will be public, open to the entire VLS community.
 
*Note:  Credits and grades for the thesis, research project, or teaching practicum are separate from the LL.M. Seminar and are given by the LL.M. candidate's thesis, project, or teaching advisor.
 
LLM:  Required.

Risk Assessment

Learn about risk assessment by living it. In this class, the instructor and students will work together to write a comment letter, petition, white paper and/or FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request. Recent class projects include a NEPA comment letter, asking the Colorado Department of Transportation to quantify the increased risk of asthma, heart disease and lung cancer from elevated air pollution faced by those living immediately adjacent (within 400 m) of the proposed rerouting of I-70 East in Denver, a petition to have mercury listed as a criteria air pollutant under the Clean Air Act, and a white paper that placed a dollar value on the ecological impacts of groundwater contamination from coal fly ash impoundments and landfills. There will be different projects each year. 
The students in the class will complete a series of assignments pertaining to this comment letter, petition, white paper or FOIA request. Roughly half of the class time is devoted to this project. The other half of the class time entails developing an overarching framework for risk assessment, illustrated when possible using the facts from the class project.  The risk assessment framework falls roughly under four headings. First, we spend several weeks reading and critiquing, just as a scientist would, several key scientific papers pertaining to the class project. To provide structure for this exercise, the students apply the facts in these scientific papers to the conceptual ideas in Science for Business, Law and Journalism, coauthored by the instructor. Our goal in this exercise is not just to understand the assumptions and reasoning of the science underlying our project, but also to learn methods of evaluating and critiquing scientific information more generally. Second, we spend several classes undertaking a risk assessment primer. This includes a simple discussion of very tiny numbers (i.e. parts per million), key concepts (e.g. risk, uncertainity, Red Book risk assessment paradigm), and the leading risk assessment cases. Third, it turns out that unschooled human intuition is not very good at assessing risk. We explore the scientific literature showing that there is a critical distinction between perceived and actual risk, and we apply these results to risk communication and management. Fourth, we undertake a broad comparative analysis of social institutions for managing risk. This discussion is also closely tied to our projects; in recent years, this has entailed discussion of mercury regulation under the Clean Air Act, including recent litigation. We compare the command-and-control regulatory approach to tort law, cost-benefit analyses, economic markets, and even insurance, all being examples of institutions that society has developed to control or reduce risk. We ask how each institution operates, and also its comparative strengths and limitations.

This course is taught by a scientist. The perspective is that of a scientist who is trying to convince agencies to use good science in rulemaking,  and trying to convince lawyers to use good science in litigation (as contrasted, for example, to the focus of attorneys on representing their clients' interests). Thus, this is a course about science and law, taught from the perspective of a scientist.

Satisfies perspective requirement.
JD/MELP:  Distributional requirement - Policy.

Scientific Controversies

Many public policy debates are deeply rooted in science. Prominent examples include global climate change, abortion, homosexuality, DNA forensics, evolution, genetically modified organisms, and debates over the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs. Sometimes the underlying science is sound, but it is seriously distorted when communicated to the public. Other times, litigation or polarized public debate leads to seriously biased scientific research being conducted in the first place, as has sometimes happened with litigation-driven medical research.
 
Our first case study is pharmaceutical company research on drug safety and effectiveness. Our goal is to understand how pharmaceutical manufacturers bias their scientific research on drug safety and effectiveness, and how a lawyer can detect this. This discussion draws heavily on several scientific papers on Vioxx and heart attacks, including an early paper finding no relation between these two variables, and a later paper that led to Vioxx being withdrawn from the market. Our second case study probes teaching evolution in public schools, focusing on the science and debate in Kitzmiller v. Dover.  In developing these two case studies, we will read several scientific papers that contain biased results, and the students will learn tools and ideas useful generally for critiquing scientific papers.
 
The last part of the course entails class discussion of scientific papers chosen by the students. Each student writes a term paper that critiques one specific controversial scientific paper of their choosing, and leads a class discussion of it. Students have great latitude in choosing the scientific paper they will critique. The instructor assists each student in identifying an appropriate scientific paper, and provides lots of individual help to each student as they develop their critique.
 
Satisfies perspective requirement.