Course Catalog

Public advocates — advocates on matters of concern to the public at large — often face big, important issues with few resources against almost overwhelming odds. We find ourselves battling large businesses, governments, or entire industries to stop a polluting mine, to restart a community’s access to clean drinking water, or to restore voting rights. Yet in many cases, we somehow find a way to win. How is that possible? That is the question we will explore in this class. We will look at a series of case studies of successful and unsuccessful public advocacy campaigns that employed a wide variety of advocacy tools: media, organizing, lobbying, and litigation. The case studies will be drawn from civil rights, worker rights, democracy protection, and environmental campaigns. Students also will develop their own case studies and share them with the class. In the process, we will cover quite a bit of public interest law; every case will be grounded in statutes and common law, and many of them include significant litigation. As a class, we will explore why certain advocacy campaigns worked, why others didn’t, who benefited from the victories and who suffered from the losses. As the semester progresses, we will develop rules and guidelines for good advocacy and a list of questions for good advocates to consider. The workload for the class this year will be commensurate with a 2-credit course.

• Type: Seminar

This course provides an introduction to the laws and regulations we use to address environmental harms. It focuses on the major pollution control statutes, particularly the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Recovery Act, and Toxic Substances Control Act. We will also examine the role of the courts in interpreting these statutes as well as the underlying scientific, economic, and policy rationales for environmental protection. Recurring themes will include the balance of federal and state authority, the influence of interest groups (both industry and environmental organizations) on environmental policy, and the disparate impact of pollution on vulnerable populations. The course will also cover recent developments in administrative and constitutional law that have significant implications for environmental regulation, such as the major questions and non-delegation doctrines.

• Type: Upper Class

Water is arguably the world’s most precious resource, and learning water law is vital to understanding the present and future of water access. Generally, water law refers to the laws that govern ownership, access to, and management of water contained in rivers, lakes, and aquifers, as well as the land that immediately underlies those water resources.
Specifically, this class will cover: the distinction in surface water interests between the riparian doctrine in the wetter eastern United States and the prior appropriation doctrine in the more arid western United States; groundwater interests in shared aquifers; the public trust doctrine; water inequality; dams and watercourse management; takings claims; federal water interests; interstate compacts; Supreme Court original jurisdiction over interstate water disputes; water rights in Indian country; transnational management of shared surface waters and aquifers; and the common enemy doctrine governing water redirection. In the examination of those topics, we will consider relationships of water law to issues of development and economic policy.

• Type: Upper Class