Practicing Environmental Law (University Casebook Series)

Practicing Environmental Law brings the provocative challenges of environmental law practice into the classroom. The book covers the traditional subject matter of an environmental law course, but with an innovative practice-based approach. Each chapter is organized around a series of case study-style problems, which require students to address an environmental problem relying on a range of supporting materials. As students work through the book, they will develop an environmental justice advocacy strategy, decide whether to bring novel Clean Air Act litigation to address climate change, consider whether fireworks displays are point sources of water pollution, assess whether the Army Corps of Engineers must prepare an environmental impact statement for a new utility line, negotiate an enforcement settlement, and negotiate the contents of a landscape-scale habitat conservation plan―among many other exercises. In tackling these problems, students will review and use affidavits, administrative orders and guidance documents, biological opinions, white papers, letters, and other document types, in addition to many statutory and regulatory excerpts and court cases. In short, they will simulate the work that environmental attorneys actually do in practice. The casebook and the accompanying online self-assessment questions written by the authors teach the basics of environmental law and also help students gain deeper understanding of, and heightened enthusiasm for, a crucially important legal field. The new second edition of Practicing Environmental Law adds a short chapter on toxics regulation, updates the materials throughout the book to reflect recent legal developments, adds a new problem on using common law claims to address climate change, and streamlines and refines many of the existing problems.