Environmental and Energy Law

This course offers an overview of the historical, legal, and policy framework for food and agriculture in the United States. Agricultural and food laws and regulations play a vital role in determining both the health outcomes for our nation and the level of environmental impact on shared natural resources such as air, water, soil, and biodiversity. The course discusses federal environmental statutes in the context of food and agricultural production and provides an introduction to the U.S. Farm Bill, pesticides, farmed animal welfare, genetically modified foods, food access, food safety, and labeling schemes.

This course will introduce students to basic principles of food and drug law and examine how significant doctrines of constitutional, administrative, and criminal law have been elaborated and applied in the food and drug context. The United States Food and Drug Administration has a pervasive role in American society: the agency reports that it regulates products accounting for 20 cents of every dollar spent by consumers. Infused by the instructor's experience of nearly 30 years of legal practice in the field, in both government and industry, the course will also explore the complex interplay of legal, ethical, policy, scientific/medical, and political considerations that underlie FDA's regulatory authority, its policy-making, and its enforcement activity. "Case studies" will predominate in the curriculum. They are intended to bring the material "to life" - to illustrate the practical experience of lawyers, and FDA's policy and enforcement choices, in the crucible of managing highly challenging regulatory issues.

This course builds on tort law and involves its application in a specialized area that focuses on the harm suffered. Rather than traumatic injuries, toxic torts are about diseases suffered as a result of the wrongful conduct of another. Of course, automobiles, baseball bats, and widgets don't cause disease. Instead, diseases (for our purposes) are caused by drugs, chemicals, minerals (asbestos is, after all, a type of mineral), radiation, cigarette smoke, and similar substances. Those substances, the diseases they cause and the lawsuits they spawn frame this course. Among the many special problems that exist in this area of tort law is causation, and that will be the focus of the course: addressing the theory of factual causation and understanding the different types of scientific evidence brought to bear on the issue of causation.

This course considers the sustainability of the modern U.S. corporation – that is, whether the corporation is capable of meeting current social needs while enabling future generations to meet their needs. The course looks at the corporation’s current design: its externalization of social costs, the short-termism of corporate decision-making, the “groupthink” culture of corporate management, and the corporation as a political actor. It then considers some current responses to these non-sustainable attributes: planet (voluntary environmental stewardship), people (voluntary EG movement), and profits (institutional shareholder activism). The course concludes by considering paradigm shifts: the new benefit corporation form, revamped ESG disclosure, new shareholder-management consortia — as well as the corporation as a moral organism and re-conceptualizations of corporate leadership. Students work in groups on a weekly basis, submit reflection papers for each unit, and write a paper at the end of the term on a “corporate sustainability” topic of their choice.

This course will teach students about the emerging field of hemp law; and how it impacts growers, processors, retailers, and other parts of the supply chain. Although hemp cultivation has been legalized at the federal level, the laws in each state still vary. This class will explore the intersection of federal and state law and the USDA’s final rule for the domestic hemp production program. In addition, the class will explore the role of other federal agencies in regulating hemp and hemp products.

This course taught as a seminar, examines the advocacy skills that lawyers use in regulatory practice to persuade agencies to adopt actions that their clients favor. Any student who thinks she or he might practice in front of a regulatory agency should benefit from the course.

A survey of legal, ethical, and policy issues regarding non-human animals. Topics include anti-cruelty laws; medical and scientific research; liability for injuries to, or caused by animals; hunting laws; and standing for animals.

Biotechnology is a major growth industry and both large and boutique law firms are establishing biotech or “life sciences” practice groups. This course surveys a range of legal topics in this field, such as FDA regulation of drugs and devices, regulation of medical research, products liability, insurance coverage of pharmaceuticals, intellectual property, and genetics.

This course examines the theories of liability and issues of proof surrounding toxic torts, which include drugs, industrial chemicals, and hazardous waste, as well as the remedial challenges they pose. A significant component of the class is coverage of the sciences that bear on causation: epidemiology, toxicology, and genetics, which are central to practice in this area in which factual causation is almost always in dispute.