By Andrew Cohen
Berkeley Law professors Holly Doremus, Dan Farber, and Joseph Sax are among the 10 most cited scholars in a law review that annually selects and reprints the year’s best articles in land use and environmental law. No other law school has more than one faculty member in the top 10.
The survey of the Land Use and Environment Law Review revealed that in the last quarter-century, Doremus and Farber shared top honors with University of Illinois law professor Eric Freyfogle—all of whom had seven articles chosen. Sax, a professor emeritus, had four articles chosen.
“We take enormous pride in our environmental law program, and Dan Farber, Holly Doremus, and Joe Sax are three major reasons why,” said Berkeley Law Dean Christopher Edley, Jr. “This is a huge honor for these world-class scholars, though hardly surprising for anyone familiar with the excellence of their work.”
Farber is the director of Berkeley Law’s environmental law program (ranked fourth nationwide by U.S. News & World Report); co-faculty director of its Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE), and chair of UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group. He’s a leading authority on disaster law and editor-in-chief of Issues in Legal Scholarship, which publishes legal and policy research on current topics in an online peer-review format. Farber has authored, co-authored, or edited 19 books.
Doremus is an expert on natural resources law, environmental law, and law and science. She’s a co-faculty director at CLEE and focuses her research on the protection of nature, biodiversity, and endangered species; conflicts between biodiversity protection and water use in the west; management of public lands and resources; and the relationship between private property rights and environmental regulation.
Sax authored the groundbreaking Michigan Environment Protection Act, popularly known as the Sax Act, the world’s first environmental law drafted on the “public trust” doctrine. It became the model for similar statutes in more than a dozen states and the basis for international environmental law. Sax has received numerous awards worldwide, and Ecology Law Quarterly has dedicated a Berkeley Law fellowship in his honor. From 1994–1996, he served as counselor to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and the department’s deputy assistant secretary for policy.
New CLEE Executive Director
For Farber and Doremus, their efforts at CLEE were recently buoyed by the addition of Jayni Foley Hein ’08 as the center’s executive director. Foley Hein earned an environmental law certificate and graduated Order of the Coif from Berkeley Law, practiced environmental law at Latham & Watkins in San Francisco, and also worked for the Conservation Law Foundation. She recently served as director of communications and development for Headstand, an educational nonprofit.
“Jayni comes to us with substantive knowledge of environmental law issues and nonprofit management and fundraising experience,” Farber said. “Her work for CLEE will revolve around fundraising, strategic planning, and budget management.”
Jayni will also promote CLEE’s popular legal blog, Legal Planet, chosen by LexisNexis Communities as one of the top 50 environmental and climate change blog sites for 2011. A collaboration of Berkeley Law and UCLA School of Law, Legal Planet was praised by LexisNexis for drawing upon “the resources and expertise of the law schools’ legal scholars and think tanks to provide insight and analysis on energy and environmental law and policy.”