Courses

This seminar provides an opportunity to explore emerging issues in dispute resolution through research and writing. The goal is to produce a publishable quality article.

Download the 2013 Summer Course Syllabus

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.

Download 2013 Course Syllabus

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.

Download the 2013 Summer Course Syllabus

This course will illustrate how animal lawyers are advancing the U.S. legal system in the interest of protecting all animals. Although our laws view animals as personal property, these lawyers and policymakers craft legal and policy arguments, and act on innovative litigation strategies, to keep the law evolving.

Download the 2013 Summer Course Syllabus

A discussion of legal rights for nonhuman animals, the sources and characteristics of fundamental rights, why nonhuman animals are presently denied them, why all humans are presently entitled to them, whether they should be available for nonhumans under the common law and, and what strategies are available for obtaining them.

Download Course Syllabus

An overview of the tremendous environmental challenges for the 1.3 billion people in China and the efforts to address them through law and regulation. After an introduction to the political and legal system and cultural background of the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, we will survey the basic regulatory schemes managing air quality, water resources and quality, natural resources, environmental impact assessments, and pending legislation concerning waste management and energy conservation. If there is sufficient interest, we may offer an additional, optional, one-credit session in China immediately following the class, to let students experience firsthand the environmental conditions and lectures and meetings with leading Chinese environmental scholars and activists.

Download 2013 Course Syllabus

Examines assumptions underlying environmental, constitutional, corporate, and other laws, and how those assumptions impede our ability to live cooperatively and sustainably with the natural world. Identifies legal, governance, and economic systems that better recognize the inherent rights of all people and the natural world.

Download the 2013 Course Syllabus

Explores the principles of ecology using an interdisciplinary approach and field-based work. Course work stresses the inventorying of biotic and physical components of a landscape, examining how these components are distributed, and determining what forces drive these patterns. Topics include interpreting the natural and cultural histories of a landscape, biodiversity conservation, and the scientific method, among others.

Download 2013 Course Syllabus

This course will focus on the conservation theory behind landscape scale projects and specific implementation actions. Case studies will draw conclusions for lawyers and practitioners. The course will involve lectures and discussion. Materials will draw on actual cases and projects involving The Nature Conservancy and other conservation organizations.

This course will introduce students to the liability, diligence and drafting issues that arise in complex environmental business transactions, such as the purchase and sale of major assets, real property and company stock.

Download 2013 Course Syllabus

Explores the range of processes that are used to resolve environmental disputes with particular emphasis on consensual processes such as negotiation and mediation.  Instruction will be based on lectures and discussions of the theory of dispute resolution and environmental law and simulations to practice the skills needed to resolve environmental disputes.

Download 2013 Course Syllabus

'Introduction to the enforcement of federal pollution control laws and a discussion of the basic regulatory structure of those laws and the enforcement tools available to regulators. Covers civil and criminal enforcement and alternatives to traditional command-and-control regulation and enforcement for gaining compliance with environmental standards.

Download 2013 Course Syllabus

This course examines the issue of environmental justice from an environmental law perspective and from a civil rights law perspective. It explores how environmental justice issues are framed, addressed, and resolved through litigation and mediation in the U.S. and internationally.

Download 2013 Course Syllabus

An introduction to the broader categories of protecting human health and the environment  to both assess the successes and failures of environmental protection in the U.S. and gain more detailed substantive knowledge of several key statutes.

Download Summer 2013 Course Syllabus

Explores the intersection between international environmental law, the law of armed conflict, and international humanitarian law, and the role of environmental protection in post-conflict reconstruction. An overview of relevant international law and an exploration of the role of international environmental norms in conflict and post-conflict situations.

Download 2013 Course Syllabus

Considers the rules governing the admissibility of testimonial, physical, documentary, and demonstrative evidence in trials and other formal legal proceedings.  Topics considered include relevance, prejudice, competency, hearsay, opinion, impeachment, and privilege.

Download Summer 2013 Course Syllabus

This course explores the global challenge of feeding the world, protecting forests and other natural landscapes, and reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. What legal and other strategies can the world use to meet food needs, stop converting natural habitats, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture to an acceptable level?

Consumer demand for environmental-preferential products is increasing. Whether intentional or not, the potential to greenwash consumers has also grown. In this course students will consider legal decisions and public policy questions raised by environmental claims and rapidly evolving methods of marketing – print and television to social media and mobile devices.

Download Summer 2013 Course Syllabus

Examines the unique body of law governing "Indian country," the geographic areas recognized by the federal government as the homelands of sovereign American Indian tribes. Major topics include the history of federal-tribal relations, tribal property rights, tribal court systems, and the balance of governmental power between tribes, states, and the federal government.

This course will examine a cutting-edge area of environmental advocacy. Under the umbrella of sustainable development, the course brings together the points of contact between three areas of international law, namely investment, human rights, and the environment, which together form one of the most dynamic areas of international environmental advocacy today. The course will explore how the various treaties underlying these three regimes relate to one another, with a particular emphasis on dispute settlement. In this context, the seminar will examine conflict of norms and hierarchy issues, as well as interpretative tools to prevent or minimize conflict. Besides these theoretical inquiries, the course will cover particular themes where human rights, environmental, and investment law interact, such as: the right to health, the right to water and sanitation, due process and denial of justice, property rights and expropriation, and stabilization clauses and positive human rights obligations. The course will place special emphasis on bilateral investment treaty negotiations, as well as on international investment arbitrations involving health, safety and environmental measures.

Download 2013 Course Syllabus

Examines the intersection between trade liberalization and environmental protection. The course addresses protection of natural resources through unilateral trade-based measures, the legality of multilateral environmental agreements employing trade measures, utilization of science-based trade tests, and environmental impacts of foreign investment liberalization.

Download 2013 Course Syllabus

Examines the tools available to preserve ecological diversity, historic places, working lands, scenic viewsheds, and open space, such as conservation easements, purchase of sensitive lands, and private/public partnerships for land conservation. The course provides a practical understanding of both the legal and nonlegal dimensions of land conservation transactions involving conservation easements.

Download 2013 Course Syllabus

Examines the nature of mediation and explores theoretical and practical aspects of the process. The course analyzes each component of the mediation process and provides students with the opportunity to apply theories and skills in simulation exercises.

Download the 2013 Course Syllabus

A hands-on introduction to the theory and practice of negotiation.  Explores the tension that is created in every negotiation between cooperating to create value with the other side and competing to claim value against the other side.  While there is a lecture component of this course, instruction relies heavily on the use of simulations. 

Download the 2013 Summer Course Syllabus

An overview of management subjects facing nonprofit organizations, including resource development, leadership and governance, staffing, planning and policy, resource management and reporting, communications, and stewardship

Download the 2013 Summer Course Syllabus

Encompasses the regulation of nuclear safety, economics, and technology, as well as nuclear waste, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear energy policy. The primary focus is on nuclear energy in the U.S., but European and Asian nuclear programs are also considered.

Download 2013 Course Syllabus

A review of domestic and international laws and treaties relating to coastal management, pollution, protected areas, endangered species, fish, marine mammals, wetlands, and seabed mineral and hydrocarbon resources. The course considers how effectively these legal authorities blend together to provide rational and comprehensive management and protection of marine resources.

Download 2013 Course Syllabus

Examines the legal and regulatory framework of domestic and international upstream and downstream oil and gas activities. Explores key domestic statutory and common law sources, regulations, and industry standards. Surveys selected international and comparative materials such as oil spill prevention agreements, arbitral decisions, and technical regulations.

An in-depth exploration of agricultural and food laws and the policies and regulatory mechanisms supporting them. The course covers diverse public health issues including Farm Bill nutrition assistance programs, food access, obesity and malnutrition, food safety and food-borne diseases, genetically modified foods, organic and other certification schemes, and the debate about food systems and sustainability.

Download Course Syllabus

A comparative approach to competing legal mandates and diverse philosophies that make federal land management a lively topic not only in the West, but throughout the country. Resource extraction, preservation, and sustainable/multiple-use concepts are addressed. 

Download Course Syllabus

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to public law, focusing on the constitutional structure of government, the legislative process and statutory interpretation, the nature and authority of public administrative agencies, the methods agencies use to establish regulations and other legal rules, and the process for judicial review of agency action.

Explores the emerging field of renewable and alternative energy supplies. The course reviews local, state, and federal laws and policies that regulate such sources; considers emerging distributed generation models; surveys the range of emerging technologies; and considers proposed strategies for reducing greenhouse gases.

Download the 2013 Summer Course Syllabus

Introduces students to the science critical to environmental law and policy, including climate science, air pollution, toxicology, and natural resource management. It also introduces students to scientific thinking and culture, and explores some of the challenges involved in effectively using science in legal and policy decision-making.

Download Summer 2013 Course Syllabus

This course sets out, in three linked modules, the fundamental knowledge that professionals should have for working in the closely intertwined fields of energy and the environment. Students may take one, two, or three modules for one credit each.

Module A: Engineering Essentials
The engineering realities of electric power grids and natural gas pipelines greatly constrain the choices that lawyers and policy analysts might otherwise make. This module will cover the engineering fundamentals inherent in the current and expected energy infrastructure.

Module B: Business Essentials
The energy and electric power industries in the U.S. are facing unprecedented challenges in meeting our society’s demands for low-cost, high-reliability energy and electricity with lower environmental impacts. This module will introduce the major financial and economic factors that energy companies use in making production and investment decisions, and how emerging environmental regulations might affect these decisions. The module will also cover deregulated market structures in the petroleum, natural gas and electric power industries.

Module C: Legal Essentials
This module will provide an overview of the fundamentals of energy law in both the US and the European Union. It will focus on what financiers, engineers, and economists need to know about energy law in order to work together and with lawyers in the energy world. The course will address some of the most important problems faced by energy project development, including facility siting, environmental issues, and authority fragmentation. In every issue a comparative perspective will be adopted.

Download Module A Syllabus

Download 2013 Module B Syllabus

Download 2013 Module C Syllabus