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. 

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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An overview of the environmental challenges for China's 1.3 billion people and the efforts to address them through law and regulation. Includes an introduction to the political and legal system and cultural background of the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter, and surveys 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. 

Climate change and other escalating global threats increasingly demonstrate the limits of our existing environmental laws to slow the pace of ecological decline. This course posits that this decline will continue until we correct the fundamentally flawed assumption underlying our legal systems that humans are separate from, and more deserving of rights than, the natural world. The course will first critically examine the sources of this faulty assumption and its impacts on preventing us from achieving a healthy, thriving planet. It will then identify existing and proposed legal, governance, and economic systems that better recognize the inherent rights of all people and the natural world to exist, thrive, and evolve, and it will discuss how such systems can be implemented on the ground to advance true sustainability. Specific applications–including a waterway’s rights to clean water, biodiversity, and adequate flow–will be highlighted and debated.

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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.

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This course explores the characteristics of environmental disputes, examines alternative dispute resolution processes (including mediation, arbitration, negotiated rule-making, and facilitation), and assesses relevant policy and practical considerations in selecting the most effective method of resolving environmental disputes. A major theme of this course will be to compare the advantages and disadvantages of adversarial and collaborative approaches in environmental conflicts, including ones involving environmental regulation and compliance, remediation of contaminated property, land use, and climate change. This course will use simulations to explore a range of dispute resolution processes, and the role of impartial third parties and lawyers in these processes. The instructor will use numerous case studies and their extensive experience as environmental mediators and facilitators. Students should be prepared to actively engage in each class session. Students cannot take this course and Negotiating Environmental Agreements in the Summer Session. Environmental Law and Administrative Law are recommended, but not required.

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This course is an introduction to the theory and practice of enforcement of the federal pollution control laws. We will first discuss the basic regulatory structure of the pollution control laws and the administrative, civil judicial, and criminal enforcement tools illegal trade, invasive species, disease, and available to federal and state regulators to ensure compliance with those laws. We will then delve into the practice of civil enforcement, including methods for investigating and establishing potential violations, selection of the appropriate enforcement response, calculation of penalties, use of supplemental environmental projects or other innovative remedies, and practical issues arising in citizen suit enforcement. We will also discuss key issues related to criminal enforcement, including establishment of the elements of the offense and considerations of mental state requirements and the burden of proof. Finally, we will discuss alternatives to traditional command-and-control regulation and enforcement for gaining compliance with environmental standards.

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An examination of environmental justice from an environmental law and a civil rights law perspective, including how environmental justice issues are framed, addressed, and resolved through litigation and mediation in the U.S.  Also a study of how developing countries and countries with economies in transition face numerous challenges in their efforts to achieve sustainable development.

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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.

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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.

A successful environmental professional needs to possess the ability to advocate, counsel, investigate, persuade, research, and educate. This course will develop those skills through various writing and oral advocacy projects. In addition to more discrete research and writing projects, students will practice drafting legislation, compose a Freedom of Information Act request, draft a public comment letter, write a grant proposal letter of inquiry, and create an environmental communication campaign. Different skills are emphasized through the exploration of these diverse types of writing. The class will focus extensively on the craft of writing well and communicating to different types of audiences.

This course considers the rules governing the admissibility of testimonial, physical, documentary, and demonstrative evidence in trials and other formal legal proceedings. Among important topics considered are authentication, relevance, hearsay, opinion and expert testimony, impeachment, and privileges. The course utilizes discussion problems, traditional case materials, the Federal Rules of Evidence, and simulations to illustrate concepts being discussed. Students will participate through problems and simulations.

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Explores the links in theory and in law between the enjoyment of internationally recognized human rights and protection of the environment through the study of case law finding environmental degradation to constitute a breach of established human rights, and through the analysis of the value and limits of procedural rights and remedies in environmental law.

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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.