News Updates

Environmental Law Program Awards 2009 Covey Fellowships

The Harvard Environmental Law Program is pleased to announce that five Harvard Law School students will receive the Covey Fellowship for Summer Work in Public Interest Environmental Law. The fellowships are made possible through a generous donation by Harvard alumna Joy Covey. Five $10,000 fellowships were awarded to students for the summer of 2009. This year’s recipients are:

Danica Anderson will be a summer law clerk at the Earthjustice Northwest Office in Seattle, Washington. Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm that works as a legal advocate on behalf of the environment, representing organizations, coalitions, and communities free of charge. The office is currently exploring, or litigating, cases involving pesticide registration, stormwater, endangered species, water law, and public lands.

Cassie Barnum will be spending the summer as a legal intern at EPA Region 1, which covers the New England states. She will split the summer between the Office of Regional Counsel and the Office of Environmental Stewardship. In the Regional Counsel's office Cassie will be working on permitting and policy issues. In the Environmental Stewardship office she will be working on enforcement actions.

Nicholas Morales will be working with the environmental nonprofit organization Natural Resources Defense Council ("NRDC") in New York City. During his ten-week summer internship, he will provide support for NRDC's litigation department, which handles lawsuits involving environmental issues nationwide. Nicholas’ work will involve researching and preparing dispositive motions, briefs, and memoranda for ongoing cases, including a challenge to the permitting of a coal power plant and an action for cleanup of a site contaminated with chromium.

Rugemeleza Nshala will be working with the Lawyers’ Environmental Action Team. While at LEAT she will be working on public interests cases filed by LEAT or those that LEAT is prosecuting for and on behalf of communities affected by environmental degradation and pollution. She will also review the Wildlife Act of 2009 to ascertain its impact on customary land rights of local communities adjacent to protected areas.

Sonia Vallabh will be working with the Environmental Crimes Section, within the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. She will be providing research and writing support to attorneys as they travel around the county prosecuting individuals and corporations who have violated the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Lacey Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Endangered Species Act, among other environmental statutes.

Environmental Law and Policy Clinic Hosts Workshop on Carbon Capture and Sequestration

The Environmental Law and Policy Clinic (ELPC) hosted an important workshop on March 30th in conjunction with the Harvard University Center on the Environment (HUC). The workshop was led by Clinical Professor Wendy Jacobs, Director of the ELPC and brought together over thirty leaders from academia, government, and business sector to focus on the legal and financial obstacles the deployment of Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) technology. Participants included representatives from the World Resources Institute, federal regulatory agencies, Environmental Defense, Zurich Financial, Bank of America, Duke Energy, CONSOL Energy and New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Michigan, and Washington state government.

The focus on legal and financial obstacles is unique among meetings of CCS experts. Although several other events have focused on the technical aspects and climate change impacts of the technology, few had thoroughly addressed legal liability for CCS related harms and the proper financial mechanisms to handle that liability. The workshop was also unique in that it simultaneously tackled short-term incentives for deployment and long-term regulatory questions. Workshop participants were eager to share different approaches—ranging from tax credits to the availability of public lands—being employed at the federal and state levels to promote the technology. Participants representing various state governments also discussed specific legislation within their states to safely manage the development of the industry, including legislation restructuring subsurface rights and ownership of injected material.

The participants were aided in their discussion by a Roadmap and White Paper produced by students of the ELPC (Leah Cohen, Sunjung Kim, Lara Kostakidis-Lianos and Sarah Rundell) along with Director, Wendy Jacobs. The Roadmap argued for the use of incentives to spur immediate large-scale development and also support a comprehensive, long-term framework for regulation of the technology. The Roadmap also calls for the balancing of CCS development with other environmental goals including environmental justice and the preservation of natural resources. The Roadmap is a result of work by clinic students over the past two semesters to identify CCS obstacles, analyze proposed legal frameworks for CCS, and develop comprehensive legislation for encouraging and regulating the technology.

Environmental Law Program Sponsors Supreme Court Preview

On October 1st, the Environmental Law Program joined the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), Harvard Environmental Law Society, and Harvard Environmental Law Review in co-sponsoring a preview of Environmental Law cases before theSupreme Court this term. The event was also webcast live to ELI participants inWashington, DC. The preview featured Professor Jody Freeman, Professor of Law and Director of the Environmental Law Program at Harvard Law School and Visiting Professor Richard Lazarus, Director of the Supreme Court Institute at the Georgetown University Law Center. The two Professors discussed several key cases in detail including the highly publicized Winters v. NRDC, Summers v. Earth Island Institute, and Entergy v. EPA cases. Both professors also stressed the number of high profile Environmental Law Cases in front of the Court this term. "This is a banner year for environmental issues, and the justices aren't done granting [new cases for review] yet, " Professor Freeman told the standing room only crowd. Many of these cases, she also noted, will have broad implications for administrative law.

Two-Year Funded Fellowship with NRDC

The Beagle/HLS Fellowship at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) provides graduating HLS students and recent alumni with a two-year funded litigation position at NRDC. The Fellowship has been established by a generous gift to Harvard Law School by the Beagle Foundation, which was created by Joy Covey and Lee Gerstein. The purposes of the Fellowship are to create a two-year job at NRDC for a recent HLS graduate; to provide training and supervision for the Fellow; to enhance the Fellows lawyering/litigation skills; and to promote the Fellows interest in pursuing a career in nonprofit environmental law. Beagle Fellows will be placed in either the Los Angeles or New York office of the NRDC.

The Beagle/HLS Fellowship will be awarded to graduating Harvard Law School students, judicial clerks or recent alumni (up to three years out of law school). Barring exceptional circumstances, preference will be given to law clerks and third-year students. Applicants must be available to start work the fall following their application.

Application instructions and additional information is available here: Beagle/HLS Fellowship. Please note that applications should be received by the Environmental Law Program no later than October 3, 2008. If you have any questions regarding the fellowship, please consult the attached packet or contact Kathy Curley, Environmental Law Program, Hauser 406, at (617) 495-3097 or curley@law.harvard.edu.

ELP Hosts Senator John Kerry at HLS

The Environmental Law Program, in conjunction with Visiting Professor Roger Ballentine, the Environmental Law Review, the Environmental Law Society, and the HLS Democrats, hosted Senator John Kerry (D-MA) for a talk on climate change on January 16, 2008. Sen. Kerry stressed the urgency of the climate change problem, arguing that the federal government needs to take action immediately to combat global warming.

“We have to move faster…we have about a ten year window to try to get this right, which means we have to start moving now,” Kerry said, explaining that the government should allocate more funds towards developing alternative energy sources. “There is a complete disconnect between the reality of what’s happening in people’s economies and the reality of what the scientists are telling us.”

Kerry said that although the climate change issue is at the forefront of the 2008 presidential campaign, there are still significant barriers to passing legislation in Congress. Nonetheless, he said, he is introducing a bill that would reduce emissions in the U.S. by 80% through an emissions trading program.

ELP Offers New Student Fellowships

The Environmental Law Program is proud to announce a generous donation by alumna Joy Covey, devoted to offering summer fellowships for students interested in working in public interest environmental law. Five fellowships will be awarded for the first time in summer 2008 to HLS students working at non-profits, government entities, and other public interest organizations working on issues such as climate change, land acquisition and management, pollution control, energy, carbon trading, environmental justice, and biodiversity conservation.

ELP Hosts Spring Carbon Offsets Conference

Spring Conference Agenda at Harvard Law School