Daniel Farber, Sho Sato Professor of Law, is teaching a new course during the spring semester, Disasters and the Law: The Legal Implications of Hurricane Katrina. Farber, an internationally recognized expert in environmental law and constitutional law, is faculty director of the California Center for Environmental Law & Policy (CCELP) at Boalt. In the wake of Katrina, Farber has led discussions among legal scholars and policymakers concerning shortcomings in the U.S. legal system to prevent and respond to large-scale disasters on the scale of Katrina. His course will enable students to play a real role in thinking through these issues and lay the groundwork for a report surveying post-Katrina legal issues.
In early January, legal scholars, attorneys, environmental experts and Boalt students participated in Après Le Déluge: Rebuilding a Sustainable City After Katrina. The one-day conference, co-sponsored by CCELP and Boalt’s Center for Social Justice, examined what’s going on in New Orleans and what can be done to improve the legal and policy infrastructure for responding to disasters. To learn more about the conference, read the San Francisco Chronicle article.