Introduction to Environmental Law and Policy

Environmental law may be the one institution standing between us and planetary exhaustion. It is also an institution that needs to be reconciled with human liberty and economic aspirations. This course considers these issues and provides a tour through existing legal regimes governing pollution, water law, endangered species, toxic substances, environmental impact analyses, and environmental risk.

The course syllabus consists of:
Week 1 - Coomon-law approaches to environmental problems
Week 2 - Property and the Environment
Week 3 - Two famous statutory programs: Environmental Impact Analysis and Endangered-Species Protection
Week 4 - Risk analysis and toxic substances: Pesticides, Trade disputes overs synthetic hormones, and the cleanup of contaminated sites
Week 5 - Environmental justice, water pollultion, clains to a human right to drinking water, fracking, and insights from a an economic model of regulatory cost-effectiveness
Week 6 - Pollution, climate change and course conclusion