Environmental Legislation and Policy

War, climate change, commercial fishing and technological development, all have impacts on the environment at a global scale. The international system has evolved a multiplicity of courts, tribunals, commissions and other types of dispute-settlement bodies, but are they well-suited to environmental disputes? The International Court of Justice, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, World Trade Organization and NAFTA panels and specialized bodies like the UN Compensation Commission have addressed disputes relating to the environment. This course takes a practical look at how they accept, review and decide disputes, looking at recent cases. Topics that may be considered include: transparency of international courts and tribunals, excessive proliferation of courts, and the ethics and independence of international courts and tribunals

The Environmental Law Writing Seminar is designed for students who are interested in environmental, land use or natural resources law, and who want to contribute to legal scholarship. It offers an opportunity to produce case notes about important opinions and other developments in the field for inclusion in the Ecology Law Quarterly’s renowned Annual Review of Environmental and Natural Resource Law, which will be published in the spring of 2007. Working with Mr. Infelise and teaching assistants during the fall semester and with the ELQ editorial staff during the spring semester, students will improve their writing and research skills while helping to shape the development of the law.

In this course, students will work in teams of two to three with government agencies or non-profit organizations to prepare one or more research memoranda under the supervision of counsel for the particular agency or non-profit organization and under the direction of the Lecturer. The research will involve subjects of importance involving complex questions of law and policy. Students will meet one or more times with counsel for the agency or organization for which they are doing the research and may be asked to present the results of their work to a Board or Commission of that agency or organization. All of the students will meet at the beginning of the semester for two consecutive weeks to receive assignments and instruction in preparing memoranda for consumption by clients. Thereafter, each student team will meet with the Lecturer periodically for review of the work in preparation. At the end of the semester, all of the students will meet for two consecutive weeks to present the results of their work to the class and the Lecturer. Grades will be based on the research memoranda produced.

This introductory course is designed to explore fundamental legal and policy issues in environmental law. By focusing on constitutional issues and a limited number of federal statutes--principally the the Administrative Procedure Act, the Clean Air Act; the Clean Water Act; CERCLA (the Superfund law),; the National Environmental Policy Act; and the Endangered Species Act--the course exposes students to the principal approaches to environmental law (litigation, command and control regulation, market incentives, and providing information), as well as to the challenges of setting environmental policy goals and choosing policy targets. The course is designed both for students who intend to pursue environmental studies further and for those who simply want to gain a basic understanding of this key area of public policy.

Energy production and use drive the world’s economies and offer hope for growth and prosperity. Yet, the extraction and use of fuels and the 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 since 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 provide 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.

Background readings will be discussed in the early part 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 on-line 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

This course emphasizes the development and application of policy solutions to developing-world problems related to poverty, macroeconomic policy, and environmental sustainability. Methods of statistical, economic, and policy analysis are applied to a series of case studies. The course is designed to develop practical professional skills for application in the international arena.

The course introduces students to technical, legal, administrative, and political elements that contribute to environmental health policy in the U.S. and how their interplay shapes policy decisions. The course covers major approaches to making policy decisions for environmental contaminants; technical methods used in policy analysis including risk assessment, cost-benefit analysis, and technology-related review; the role of legislative and administrative institutions; and the role of interests and political actors in policy debates, particularly those with technical components. The course will also examine emerging approaches to assessment of environmental and health problems including use of precautionary principles and environmental justice, comparing these to the currently predominant environmental management paradigm.

This course introduces the basic scientific components of environmental and occupational health risk assessment and describes the policy context in which decisions to manage environmental health risks are made. The course presents the quantitative methods used to assess the human health risks associated with exposure to toxic chemicals, focusing on the four major components of risk assessment: hazard identification, dose-response assessment, exposure assessment, and risk characterization. Students use these tools to develop their own risk assessment for an environmental health problem. The course also provides a broad overview of occupational and environmental health regulations with consideration of how hazard, risk, cost, and benefits are considered. Current political controversies about environmental policy will be examined.

An advanced investigation of current problems in land use and environmental management, with a focus on the development of proposed policy responses and implementation strategies. Topics will vary from year to year. Likely topics include: the regulation of sensitive lands; environmental impact assessment; the regulation of design; supra-local land use controls; water resources law and policy; public lands, coastal zone management; hazardous lands; resource extraction.