Environmental Law
Courses
The following courses are available for those interested in environmental law:
- Administrative Law
- Agriculture and Environment
- Animal Law
- Biodiversity Policy
- California Environmental Issues
- Comparative Environmental Politics and Policy
- Disasters and the Law: The Legal Implications of Hurricane Katrina
- Energy Regulation and the Environment
- Environmental Compliance and Enforcement
- Environmental Law and Development Workshop
- Environmental Law and Policy
- Environmental Law Workshop
- Environmental Law Writing Seminar
- Environmental Litigation
- Environmental Law Practicum
- Environmental Remedies
- International Environmental Law
- International Tribunals and the Environment
- Land-Use Planning and Control
- Lawyering for Environmental Justice
- Local Government Law
- Metropolitan Planning Seminar
- Ocean and Coastal Law and Policy
- Ocean Law in the Nuclear Age
- Public Lands and Natural Resources Management
- RCRA and Common Law Claims
- Takings Clause Seminar
- Water Resources Law
- Wildlife Law & Land Use
- Workshop on Development and the Environment
Administrative Law
This survey course will consider the creation and control of the modern administrative state. Topics will include the structure of administrative agencies and their place in a governing scheme of separated but overlapping powers, delegation of authority to agencies, types and requirements of agency decision-making, availability and scope of judicial review of agency action (and inaction), and other forms of agency oversight. A variety of policy areas will be considered, including (among others) homeland security, emergency management, the environment, food and drugs, and telecommunications.
Agriculture and Environment
Agriculture and the Environment is a seminar course exploring the interplay between agricultural practices and environmental impacts and examining the social and economic costs of current agricultural policies. The course will begin with an analysis of the historical and political narrative that influences agricultural policy decisions. This narrative will be juxtaposed against today’s reality of large, often heavily polluting, mega-farms that are largely immune from environmental regulation. The course will draw upon economic theory to consider the costs of these policies and will explore the politics leading up to their development.
The course will analyze special exceptions for agriculture in the environmental context, focusing on right-to-farm statutes that provide agricultural operations with immunity from nuisance lawsuits and statutory exemptions that shield them from federal environmental laws. The scope of these special protections will be explored in depth.
Animal Law
This course presents a survey of the historical and current status of this rapidly developing specialty. In brief, animal law encompasses all areas of the law in which the nature—legal, social, or biological—of nonhuman animals is an important factor. This is not an animal rights course, although certainly the question of what rights animals should or do have will be raised as a natural consequence of reading the casebook. Rather, it is an objective and logical specialization of a challenging area—one with a growing number of cases and laws, increasing public and practical interest, and significantly different historical, legal, and philosophical foundations than most other courses.
Biodiversity Policy
This course explores the goals of biodiversity conservation policy, tensions between those goals and other societal goals, the difficulty of identifying biological entities to target for conservation purposes, the range of public approaches to biodiversity conservation in the United States, and the role of private conservation efforts. The class also considers the roles of different levels and branches of government, experts both inside and outside of government, non-governmental organizations, the general public, and the market in biodiversity conservation. We will use case studies as well as more traditional readings to approach these issues.
California Environmental Issues
Instructor will moderate six panel discussions by outside speakers on key California environmental law and policy issues. One of the sessions will focus on the law of global warming/climate control. Possible other topics may include environmental federalism (i.e., the respective California and federal roles in environmental regulation, the clash between environmental regulation and private property rights, and coastal resource regulation and preservation in California. The guest speakers will include academics, practicing environmental attorneys, and non-legal experts (e.g., scientists and economists.) Class will meet for six sessions on alternate weeks during the semester.
Comparative Environmental Politics and Policy
This seminar explores environmental politics and policies through the lens of comparative and international politics. The first half of the seminar compares national responses to environmental issues and problems. Students examine political and legal institutions, modes of political participation, the structure of environmental policy, policy styles, and the dynamics of agenda setting in both developed and developing nations. The seminar's second half addresses the international and regional dimensions of environmental politics and policies, with particular focus on trade and the environment, environmental regulation and international competitiveness, regional environmental cooperation (EU, NAFTA, APEC), the formation and implementation of global environmental treaties, the role of international institutions, and the patterns of conflict and cooperation between developed and developing countries.
Disasters and the Law: The Legal Implications of Hurricane Katrina
For this course, background readings will be discussed in the early parts of the semester, but the primary focus will be on student research papers. The tentative plan is that the papers will be the basis of a report surveying post-Katrina legal issues, which will be disseminated online or otherwise. The issues cut across many fields of law, including disaster planning and prevention, torts/compensation, environmental, land-use planning, social justice, tax, and insurance/reinsurance.
Energy Regulation and the Environment
Energy production and use drives the world's economies and offers hope for growth and prosperity. Yet the extraction and use of fuels and development of energy facilities are among the greatest threats to the global environment. This course introduces students to the legal, economic, and structural issues that both shape our energy practices and provide opportunities to overcome these critical problems. The course focuses primarily on the regulation and design of electricity systems and markets because so many energy choices—the use of oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, the green alternatives such as solar, wind, and energy conservation or "demand-side management"—relate to the way we generate or deliver electricity, or avoid the need to do so. Next to the use of petroleum for transportation, electric generation is the greatest contributor to air pollution and the greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, as urban and suburban development spread across the land, the maintenance and expansion of the electric transmission grid creates increasingly challenging land-use problems. The course examines both the traditional monopoly model of regulation and evolving competitive alternatives. The course exposes students to energy resource planning, pollution management, rate design, green markets, energy efficiency, demand-side management, renewable energy portfolios, climate change, and carbon management. The course provides an introduction to administrative law and to practice issues in the field.
