Courses

Provides students with a working knowledge of the general principles of administrative law;  implementation of legislative policy through administrative agencies, including the role of administrative agencies in the governmental process, rulemaking, adjudication, and judicial review of agency actions

This course will reinforce the importance of persuasion in the context of dispute resolution. Students will first work on a variety of smaller writing assignments they might encounter when negotiating or mediating an issue, including letter briefs to opposing counsel and mediation briefs. In the second half of the course, students will focus on researching and writing a paper addressing an issue in the realm of dispute resolution, which will be presented during the final week of classes.

Seminar topics will include proposals for reducing the economic and environmental costs of meeting energy needs.  Because of its importance for both finance and emissions, the electricity sector will be a major focus of this class.  Efforts to reduce costs through more efficient delivery and end-use will be assessed, with specific attention to the statutory, regulatory, and contractual techniques for creating sound incentives. Each student will need to produce a significant written paper based on sophisticated research and thinking about a key area in energy policy and law.  Writing requirements may be co-ordinated with (but must supplement) LL.M. or M.E.L.P. requirements.  Successful students should emerge with many of the skills useful for contributing to the work of an energy commission, a law firm with an energy practice, an environmental group addressing energy issues, or a company delivering energy or efficiency services.

Prerequisite:  Either Energy Law & Policy In a Carbon Constrained World or Energy Regulation, Markets and Environment (previously or concurrently) or instructor's permission.

JD/MELP:  Distributional requirement  - Policy, Regulatory, and Resource Management/Planning

This seminar provides in-depth exposure to the most useful, efficient strategies and resources for environmental law research, including highly specialized information databases, advanced administrative law research, legislative history, and environmental news/updating services. The course goes well beyond the basics taught in introductory legal research classes and is designed to prepare students to research all types of environmental legal materials for use while in law school as well as in practice. Students will be evaluated on the quality of a research project focused on an environmental issue of their choosing, as well as class participation.
This is a limited enrollment course. Choose section A or Section B–not both. This is a limited enrollment course.

Provides in-depth exposure to the most useful, efficient strategies and resources for environmental law research, including highly specialized information databases, advanced administrative law research, legislative history, and environmental news/updating services.

Land use development and management practices can have significant impacts on the conservation of biodiversity, yet land use is not systematically regulated to address those impacts.  Instead, a mosaic of intersecting legal institutions regulate private land use through federal laws (e.g. the Endangered Species Act, wetlands regulation under the Clean Water Act) state laws (e.g., growth management systems, environmental impact assessment requirements) local regulation (e.g. general plans, subdivision regulations, zoning ordinances) and private actions (e.g. conservation easements).  This writing seminar examines the intersection of advanced forms of land use regulation in the context of an in-depth student investigation of a significant biodiversity conservation challenge.  Reading focuses on (1) the relationship between local, state, and federal regulation, and (2) the relationship between public regulation and private means of conserving biodiversity.  Each student will select a case study of a conservation effort involving land use that involves multiple regulatory actors and multiple laws.  Students will review regulatory and easement documents, interview regulators, community participants and developers, produce a written case-study, and prepare present the case to the class.

An overview of the environmental impacts of agriculture, U.S. agricultural policy, the Farm Bill, genetically modified crops, organic farming certification, and international trade and environmental agreements that influence agricultural practices in the U.S.

This course teaches students how to interpret and apply the Clean Air Act and its implementing regulations.  The course will cover major programs and topics within the Clean Air Act, including national ambient air quality standards, state implementation plans, pollution trading programs, hazardous air pollutant requirements, new source review, permitting, mobile source controls, and climate change.  Students will be expected to read the statutory and regulatory provisions carefully, understand the history of those provisions, and consider the science and policies which animate them.  The course will require students to take an in-depth look at how the statute and regulations are implemented, both administratively and through the courts.  Students will also have an opportunity to look toward the future and discuss ways to improve air quality, address climate change, and reform the regulatory process.
 
Administrative Law is required.
Environmental Law is strongly recommended.
 JD/MELP:  Distributional requirement - Regulatory and Policy.

This course presents the theory and practice of arbitration, negotiation, mediation and other processes placed under the umbrella of alternative dispute resolution. This survey course focuses on the theory and practice of dispute resolution as either an alternative or an addition to formal litigation. Students will study the legal, sociological, and ethical issues in dispute resolution and apply them in simulation exercises designed to explore the three major types of alternative dispute resolution.

This course addresses the fundamental crisis in which growing energy demands are threatening the buffering capacity of our global atmosphere, while also producing the greatest emissions of most primary pollutants, and the struggle to identify and create the legal elements necessary to promote and ensure solutions.

The arbitration process can be an efficient and expeditious alternative to litigation that has traditionally been used where the parties have a continuing relationship, e.g., commercial, construction, and labor contract disputes. More recently it has been institutionalized in court systems, as a settlement device in the litigation process, and in federal and state regulatory schemes. This course will also explore the controversial issues of requiring arbitration where corporations have incorporated arbitration clauses in employment and consumer contracts without the kind of bargaining that usually occurs in continuing commercial and labor relationships. The course examines the nature of the arbitration process, rules governing hearings, and the relationship between arbitration and the court system, e.g., the enforceability of agreements to arbitrate and judicial review of arbitration award, in a practical setting. This course does not satisfy the DR distributional requirement for the MELP program. It is not recommended for non-JD students.

This course will explore the interface of environmental laws and federal bankruptcy statutes The goals of bankruptcy are in direct conflict with the goals of environmental law, in particular CERCLA. The tension between these two policies is profound. Topics covered will include the rights and obligations of debtors and creditors under the Bankruptcy Code, the discharge of environmental debts in bankruptcy, and the abandonment of contaminated property by the bankruptcy trustee.

Not offered in 2009-10.

An examination of what biodiversity is, the growing threats to it, and U.S. and international laws to combat those threats. The course focuses on current controversies to highlight legal, scientific, and political strategies for protecting biodiversity. Particular emphasis is placed on the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

CERCLA (also known as Superfund) touches many areas of the law, including real estate development, financial planning, corporations, small business development, municipal government and insurance law. This course will explore why CERCLA may be the environmental law every lawyer should know. Through statutory and case analysis and reflection on the policy implications of the law, we will examine CERCLA's broad liability and cost recovery provisions, emergency response and cleanup requirements that extend beyond the usual Superfund sites. Natural resources damages, community involvement, and recent Supreme Court decisions related to voluntary cleanup and cost recovery will be discussed. Toxics release reporting and the Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act amendments will also be addressed. Students will think strategically about how parties escape liability through due diligence, defenses, and pollution prevention, and how parties limit liability through cost recovery, settlement and cost allocation.
*Students who enrolled in the summer CERCLA course may enroll in this course with prior permission of the instructor.

JD/MELP: Distributional requirement - Regulatory and Policy.
MELP: Distributional requirement - Regulatory and Policy.

Prerequisite: Concurrent or prior enrollment in Corporations is recommended, but not required.

The heat is on, in the courts as well as the biosphere. Seeking to prod faster governmental response to the growing menace of climate change, advocates are turning to the courts to seek injunctions against sluggish agencies and damages against industrial sources of greenhouse gases. Climate litigation has brought together an intriguing coalition of states, environmentalists, and "green" economic interests. Emboldened by the landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA, federal courts across the country have handed down a number of important decisions with more to come. This course will review the various statutory and common law claims being tried, the kinds of remedies being sought, and the jurisdictional and evidentiary obstacles that must be overcome. Grading will be based on a litigation memo and mock hearing.
Regulatory, Policy

Download Course Syllabus

The Arctic generally is considered the least studied and most poorly understood area on Earth. At the same time, global warming has reduced ice cover and thus increased pressure to allow industrial activities such as oil and gas development in Arctic waters. This course explores the pressures to develop America’s Arctic, the legal structures pursuant to which development decisions are and should be made, how the Deepwater Horizon disaster has influenced those decisions, and what development of the Arctic means for local residents, the United States, and the world. Throughout the course, the role in shaping the law of science, and impacts to Arctic indigenous peoples and the environment will be addressed.

This seminar explores the ways in which tax systems can effect change in the energy consumption behavior of business, industry, and consumers.  The seminar addresses issues of theory, policy, politics, and law and --while focusing on climate change-- provides students with a framework for understanding how and when to use tax measures to address other environmental problems.

This course provides a comparative overview of how China and the United States are addressing significant environmental problems. After an introduction to the political and legal system of China, we will review how Chinese environmental law seeks to control pollution and to protect natural resources, enormous challenges in a rapidly developing country of 1.3 billion people. The course will compare and contrast the approaches to regulation used in China with those employed by the U.S. Among the other topics that we will consider are: environmental impact assessment, the process of adopting environmental legislation and the issuance of implementing regulations, public participation in environmental protection, environmental enforcement, and evolving approaches to combating climate change. Students may also participate in an additional, optional, one-credit session in China immediately following the class. This will enable them to experience directly environmental conditions in China and to meet leading Chinese environmental scholars and activists.

To understand global environmental problems, environmental professionals must study how different cultures and societies conceptualize and manage the environment. This interdisciplinary seminar will combine the study of cultural ecology, the cross-cultural study of the interaction of humans and the environment with legal anthropology, the cross-cultural study of conflict. The first part of the course will examine the historical roots of the current environmental crisis in the development of agriculture, urbanization and industrialization. We will start our study with cross-cultural environmental disputes in the United States. Next, we will examine idea of "the tragedy of the commons" and the ways other societies manage common resources. In the main part of the course, we will concentrate on the political and cultural challenges of climate change in other historical periods and the challenges that global warming presents in different parts of the world today and future. The last part of the course will be student presentations. The grade will depend on a substantial research paper, a class presentation of the research topic and class participation.

Satisfies perspective requirement.

JD/MELP:  Distributional requirement -  Ethics/Philosophy; Policy.
MELP:  Distributional requirement - Ethics/Philosophy.

Ecology is an integrative science that can provide insight into many contemporary environmental problems. Through visits to a variety of field sites in central Vermont, readings, and lectures, this course will explore the principles of ecology using a hands-on, interdisciplinary approach. Course work stresses the inventorying of biotic and physical components of a landscape (pieces), examining how these pieces are distributed (patterns), and determining what forces drive these patterns (processes). Topics will include interpreting the natural and cultural histories of a landscape, biodiversity conservation, and the scientific method, among others. This course requires minimal previous scientific understanding.
This is a limited enrollment course. Choose Ecology A or Ecology B (Term Two)-not both