For a complete list of course offerings in Environmental Law, including full descriptions and faculty who will be teaching the offerings in 2008-2009, refer to the online Curriculum Guide.
Environmental law is well represented in Columbia's J.D. and graduate programs. Columbia was one of the first law schools inthe country to offer a course in environmental law. The course has been taught continuously since 1970, and the content of the course has reflected the development and changes of this ever-broadening field during the past 38 years. The course provides an introduction to the basic federal environmental statutes: the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Superfund Act (CERCLA). Particular attention is given to cross-cutting issues that affect all of environmental law, including the division of authority between the federal government and the states, the division of authority between agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, Congress, and the courts, and the proper role of cost-benefit and risk analysis in setting environmental standards.
In addition to the core course, Environmental Law, there is a seminar in Environmental Litigation, taught by one of the earliest and best-known practitioners in the field. Specific environmental law and environmental litigation offerings are supplemented by other courses that emphasize significant aspects of environmental controls in their coverage.
Among the foundation courses, Torts also covers injuries to interest in land, public and private nuisance and the use of injunctive remedies, all of which contributed to the development of environmental law, connecting contemporary environmental law and litigation with its early common law sources. A similar analytical basis for the development of environmental law is provided int he foundation course in Property. The first-year elective, Regulation: Decentralization and Globalization devotes a significant part of its coverage to environmental law.
A number of upperclass offerings contribute significantly to the breadth of knowledge needed by the environmental lawyer. A basic offering is the course Administrative Law, which explores in greater detail the issues that arise in administrative policymaking and review of administrative decisions by the courts. Because most environmental law decisions involve judicial review of agency action, Administrative Law is an important supplement to the basic course in environmental law for anyone interested in that area. The course in State and Local Government Law addresses many issues, including intergovernmental concerns, that are reflected in environmental law. Other courses in the area of property and real estate address the recurring issues of the management of land and its uses. These courses have particular relevance to a number of aspects of environmental law, particularly to problems growing out of CERCLA, where a purchaser of land may discover that the presence of hazardous waste on the land has turned a pruchase of assets into an acquisition of liabilities.
With increasing concern for international environmental law, several international offerings have special relevance to this field. In particular, the course in International Environmental Law looks at recent efforts to work out interntional policy under the auspices of the United Nations and its agencies.
Through the Environmental Law Clinic, students learn lawyering skills in the context of pursuing real cases. They represent local, regional and national environmental and community organizations working to solve critical environmental challenges facing the metropolitan region as well as other parts of the world.
