Environmental Law Programming
Harvard Law School’s Environmental Law Program continues to grow. Under the direction of Professor Jody Freeman, the Program is in the midst of an exciting year marked by developments on several fronts. This year’s Environmental Law Fellow, Meghan Morris, continues to facilitate the Program’s progress.
The Environmental Law Program is please to announce several updates for the 2007-2008 academic year:
First, the new Environmental Law & Policy Clinic, under the leadership of Enviromental Law & Policy Clinic Director Wendy Jacobs is offering students an opportunity to do hands-on, meaningful, real-life and real-time environmental legal and policy work. Clinical offerings will include local, national and international projects covering the spectrum of environmental issues.
Second, we are offering a diverse array of environmental law courses for 2007-2008. In addition to the foundational Environmental Law course, taught by Professor Freeman in the Spring, several courses and seminars are or have been taught by visiting professors and lecturers. John Leshy, Professor of Law at UC Hastings College of Law and former Solicitor of Interior, taught courses in Federal Public Land and Resources Law as well as Water Law during the Fall semester. During Winter Term, Roger Ballentine, former Chairman of the White House Climate Change Task Force under President Bill Clinton, taught HLS's first course on the Law of Climate Change. This Spring, J.B. Ruhl, Professor of Property at Florida State University College of Law is teaching Land Use Law and a seminar on the Law and Policy of Ecosystem Services. Lecturer on Law Tyler Giannini is teaching Human Rights and the Environment Advocacy Seminar in the Fall and Spring. Also this Spring, Clinical Director and Lecturer on Law, Wendy Jacobs is teaching HLS' first seminar on Environmental Law Practice: Skills, Methods and Controversies in the Spring.
More broadly, we are in the midst of designing a comprehensive curriculum that will provide each HLS student an opportunity to be exposed to environmental issues. The Program will offer a wide selection of environmental law courses over every three-year period, allowing curious students an opportunity to be introduced to the field,and offering those with a dedicated interest to pursue advanced work. The new curriculum will guarantee students access to core courses like Environmental Law, Natural Resources Law, International Environmental Law, and Energy Law, and will complement courses in other fields to prepare students for careers in environmental law and to enable students who, while not envisioning a career in the field, might wish to educate themselves about environmental and natural resource issues. The Program, through these courses and other academic activities, will also provide access for students to legal scholars working on different aspects of environmental law. Recent faculty hires at HLS, such as the hiring of the renowned Cass Sunstein, have augmented the permanent faculty working on environmental law. Click here for the announcement of the hiring of Cass Sunstein
Third, we continue to work with HLS’s student groups, including the Environmental Law Society (ELS) and the Harvard Environmental Law Review, as well as our alumni network. Last Spring, we featured an Environmental Speakers Series organized by ELS, and have planned several events for the 2007-2008 academic year. In addition, we continue to compile fellowship and job resources for current students and young alumni. Please feel free to contact us to publicize opportunities!
Fourth, we have just established five fellowships of $10,000 each to support summer employment focused on public interest environmental issues, funding students employed at NGOs, government agencies, and other public interest organizations working on issues such as climate change, land acquisition and management, pollution control, energy, carbon trading, environmental justice, or biodiversity conservation. These fellowships will be granted for the first time during the summer of 2008. They have been provided by alumna Joy Covey.
Fifth, the ELP also continues to be engaged in the organization of the Junior Scholar Workshop, the first of which was held in June 2007. The workshop is a biannual, bicoastal effort co-sponsored by the ELP at HLS, Boalt Hall, and UCLA. This workshop is designed to support the academic work of the next generation of scholars in the field of environmental law. Participants in the workshop are invited to submit work falling within the general field, which is broadly defined to include property, administrative law, and constitutional law, among other topics. Senior scholars in the field then critique and advise on the papers in a series of discussions over the course of the day.
Sixth, and finally, we are holding another major conference on April 11, 2008. Following the success of our spring 2006 conference on New Prospects for Climate Change Regulation, which featured leading scholars and policymakers (including Senator Jeff Bingaman, D-NM). The conference will be focused on opportunities and challenges for state carbon trading schemes, with particular attention to carbon offsets, and will be co-sponsored by The Harvard Center for the Environment and the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University. Our panelists and invitees will provide a broad range of expertise and range from policy makers to offset market participants, state officials and academics. The conference will be policy relevant, focusing on the challenges for states that wish to use carbon offsets in their greenhouse gas reduction programs. For a conference agenda, please click here.
2006-2007 Environmental Law Programming