Course Section | Columbia Law School

Section Description Provided by Instructor

This is an extraordinary time for environmental law. With the 2008 change in control of the White House, and with the same party in control of Congress, we are now seeing action on energy, climate, water pollution, fisheries, and natural resources protections that has been bottled up for years. Changes by the prior federal administration to long-established environmental programs continue to be revisited. Global warming is receiving more and more attention from our political, legal, and economic institutions. The Supreme Court has handled more environmental cases recently than ever before. States, particularly New York and California, remain actively involved in many of the debates, making issues of federalism and preemption far more than just academic discussions.

This seminar is intended to help provide students the tools for assessing these debates and considering different methods of environmental protection. We will review ethical, economic, and scientific concerns that motivated, and continue to shape, environmental legislation and its implementation. We will consider the key federal environmental statutes, paying more attention to the underlying management methods than to specific statutory programs. Common law approaches to environmental problems will be examined, particularly by contrast to statutory responses. We will also highlight the important role of litigation.

We will usually use actual cases and contemporary contexts as in-class exercises to assist understanding how successful the different methods are in achieving their goals. A number of case studies will provide an opportunity to discuss strategies and solutions for some of our most pressing and vexing environmental problems, including by applying the course materials and approaches derived from independent research. We also encourage students to use seminar papers to explore one of the statutory methods studied and analyze in more detail its application to a specific context.