LAW-2053 Environmental Law Survey
This course offers an introduction to the legal mechanisms used to address environmental harms to water and land resources, species habitat, air, and the climate. We will examine sources of environmental law and then survey the key U.S. federal environmental statutes: The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act, as well as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (Superfund) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.This course will challenge you to wrestle with some of the most pressing questions in environmental practice – climate change, adaptation, and resiliency; the role of administrative agencies in carrying out environmental policies; unequal distribution of environmental harms and benefits; and the importance of sound science to environmental regulation. This course also touches on whether traditional environmental laws are suited to address these issues.Students need not be self-identified environmentalists to be interested in this course. Nearly every area of legal practice is affected by environmental regulation, including corporate law, real estate, land use, financing, bankruptcy, and estate planning. The legal issues presented by environmental problems offer ample opportunities for students to develop transferable legal skills to understand any complex area of regulation, including statutory interpretation, regulatory analysis, and application of administrative law doctrines.Throughout the course we will turn periodically to the twists and turns presented by the second Trump Administration and proposed new regulations, guidance, and developing case law - all of which will be used illustrate the different approaches to environmental problems. Grading will be based on class participation, research assignments, which will be short, easy, and mostly in-class and designed to call your attention to the real-world application of environmental laws in our region, and a final exam.