Journal of Energy, Climate, and the Environment | Symposium 2009: Climate Policy Advice for the Obama Administration
Climate Policy for the Obama Administration
sponsored by the Journal of Energy, Climate, and Environment and Environmental Law Society
Friday, February 20, 2009
Millhiser Moot Court Room
President Obama has proposed a comprehensive energy plan which includes a major shift in U.S. climate policy. Among other commitments, he supports an economy-wide cap-and-trade system designed to reduce emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and a reengagement with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations. In the first few days since his election, he has reaffirmed these issues as a priority for his administration and begun to take significant policy steps.
This interdisciplinary symposium, which will be held one month after the Obama Administration takes office, will assess the Administration's initial steps on climate change and reflect on the road ahead. Our aim is to not only provide interesting academic discussion, but also to produce a policy assessment that might be useful to those advising the new Administration. Panels will focus on managing scientific and policy uncertainty, addressing complexities of scale, reconceptualizing energy policy, and achieving greater justice. A number of presenters will participate remotely to reduce the carbon footprint of the conference.
The symposium will also serve as an initial planning meeting for a regional coalition of academics working on climate change issues. We plan to build from this dialogue to encourage greater collaboration and coordination among academics and policymakers in the region. If you are interested in participating in the coalition, please contact Hari Osofsky at osofskyh@wlu.edu.
 |
|
Complete Schedule
Opening Remarks
Panel One: Managing Scientific and Policy Uncertainty
Video Audio
Dean Rodney Smolla
Professor Osofsky
Professor Robin Craig (remotely), Adapting the Clean Water Act to Climate Change
Professor J.B. Ruhl (remotely), Climbing Mount Litigation: The Route for Existing Laws
Professor Stephanie Stern, Risk Perception and the Law of Climate Change
Professor Jonathan Wiener (remotely), Can We Adopt and Implement a Successful Comprehensive Cap-and-Trade Climate Policy? Yes We Can
Professor Tseming Yang, Considering the Opportunities and Challenges of a Bilateral US-China Carbon Reduction Agreement
Moderator: Professor Johanna Bond
Panel Two: Addressing Complexities of Scale Video Audio
Professor Tony Arnold, The Complex and Interdependent Relationship Between Land Use and Climate Change: Uni-Dimensional Policy Failure and Multi-Dimensional Policy Functionality
Professor Hari Osofsky, Towards Diagonal Climate Regulation
Professor Nathan Sayre, Climate Change, Scale, and Devaluation: The Challenge of Our Built Environment
Professor David Wirth, Meshing Domestic and International Initiatives
Moderator: Professor Erik Luna
Panel Three: Greening Energy Policy Video Audio
Professor Rebecca Bratspies, Rethinking Oil Leases
Professor Marcilynn Burke, The Public Nature of Private Solar Energy Development on Federal Public Lands
Professor James Casey, Biofuel Economics: "Internalizing the Externalities" of Fuel Choices
Professor David Markell (remotely), Greening the Economy Sustainably
Professor Noah Sachs, Leaner and Greener: Energy Consumption and the U.S. Climate Strategy
Moderator: Professor Mark Drumbl
Panel Four: Achieving Greater Justice Video Audio
Professor Tracy Bach (remotely), Why and How the New Administration Should Expressly Account for Intergenerational Justice When Forging Climate Policy
Professor Maxine Burkett (remotely), Climate Justice in the Obama Era
Professor Bill Hamilton, Why Eating Local Matters
Professor Linda Malone, Implementing the Responsibility to Protect the Environment During the Obama Administration
Moderator: Professor Mark Carey
About the Participants
Rebecca Bratspies
Rebecca Bratspies is an Associate Professor of Law at the CUNY School of Law where she teaches international law, environmental law, and administrative law. Professor Bratspies has published widely on the topics of environmental liability, international fisheries, and genetically modified food crops. Her scholarly research focuses on environmental regulatory regimes, and she is particularly interested in the international dimensions of environmental regulation. Her recent work explores issues of sustainability, and focuses on the problem that uncertainty poses for regulatory decision making and the role that trust plays in mediating that uncertainty. Professor Bratspies was the co-founder of the annual University of Idaho College of Law Symposium on International Law and co-editor of TRANSBOUNDARY HARM IN INTERNATIONAL LAW: LESSONS FROM THE TRAIL SMELTER ARBITRATION (Cambridge 2006) and PROGRESS IN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION (Martinus Nijhoff 2008). Professor Bratspies is also a research scholar with the Center for Progressive Reform in Washington D.C. (www.progressivereform.org). Professor Bratspies holds B.A. in Biology from Wesleyan University and a J.D. cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Marcilynn Burke
Marcilynn Burke teaches courses in Environmental Law and Property. She received her A.B. in International Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her J.D. from Yale Law School where she was an editor for both the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism and the Yale Journal of International Law. She also served as a teaching assistant for both undergraduate and law school classes. After graduating from Yale, she clerked for the Honorable Raymond A. Jackson of the Eastern District of Virginia. Following her clerkship, she joined the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. During her four years at the firm, her practice focused on environmental law, antitrust, and civil and criminal litigation. After leaving the firm, Professor Burke spent the 2001-02 academic year as a visiting professor of law at Rutgers School of Law-Camden (New Jersey). Professor Burke's scholarly interests include environmental law and international commercial arbitration.
Maxine Burkett
Maxine Burkett is an Associate Professor of Law at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai'i and serves as the inaugural Director of the Island Climate Center: The Center for Island Resiliency and Climate Policy. Professor Burkett attended Williams College and Exeter College, Oxford University, and received her law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Burkett's courses include Torts, Climate Change Law and Policy, Environmental Law, Race and American Law, and International Development. She has written in the area of Race, Reparations, and Environmental Justice. Currently, her work focuses on "Climate Justice," writing on the disparate impact of climate change on poor and of-color communities and the United States' moral and legal obligation to these communities nationally and internationally. She has presented her research on Climate Justice throughout the United States, West Africa, and the Caribbean. As Director of the Island Climate Center, she leads projects to address climate change law and policy in the context of small island states and communities in Hawai'i, the Pacific region, and beyond.
Mark Carey
Mark Carey is an assistant professor in the Department of History of Washington and Lee University, where he has taught Latin American and environmental history since 2006. His research, funded by the National Science Foundation, focuses on the societal dimensions of global climate change and glacier retreat in the Peruvian Andes. His book, THE CONQUEST OF MELTING ICE: CLIMATE, GLACIER DISASTERS, AND SOCIETY IN THE ANDES, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. He also studies the historical relationship between climate, health, and tourism in the Caribbean and South America. Professor Carey recently received a 2009 Outstanding Faculty Award from the commonwealth of Virginia. Last year he won the Leopold-Hidy Prize for the best article published in the journal Environmental History during 2007, for his essay "The History of Ice: How Glaciers Became an Endangered Species." He is currently developing an interdisciplinary course on "Climate and Society" and also teaches "Disasters in the Americas."
James Casey
Dr. Casey received his PhD from North Carolina State University in 2001. His teaching and scholarly interests lie in the areas of environmental economics and economic development. He has conducted fieldwork in the Yucatan Peninsula and traveled throughout Belize and Guatemala. Professor Casey's work has been published in the Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Problemas Del Desarrollo, Ecological Economics, and the International Journal of Sustainable Development. Current projects include empirical investigations of the willingness-to-pay for coral reef protection in Mexico and Barbados as well as exploring options for biofuel development in the Chesapeake Basin. Dr. Casey is married to Ms. Lisa D'Amelio and they have two lovely daughters, Catarina, 7, and Olivia, 5. Visit Dr. Casey's homepage.
Robin Craig
Robin Kundis Craig is the Attorneys' Title Insurance Fund Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Environmental and Land Use Law Program at the Florida State University College of Law in Tallahassee, Florida. Professor Craig specializes in all things water, including the Clean Water Act, coastal water pollution, the intersection of water issues and land issues, marine biodiversity and marine protected areas, and water law. She is the author of THE CLEAN WATER ACT AND THE CONSTITUTION (ELI 2004; 2nd Ed. ELI 2008) and ENVIRONMENTAL LAW IN CONTEXT (Thomson/West 2005; 2nd Ed. 2008), plus over 40 law review articles and book chapters. In addition, she recently completed two years of work with the National Research Council's Committee on the Clean Water Act and the Mississippi River, which culminated in the October 2007 release of the Committee's report, Mississippi River Water Quality and the Clean Water Act: Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities, and has been appointed to the Council's follow-up Committee on implementation for 2008-2009. Professor Craig also serves as Chair of the American Bar Association's Constitutional Environmental Law Committee, as Vice Chair of it Marine Resources Committee, and as Supreme Court News Editor for the ABA's Administrative & Regulatory Law News. At Florida State, she teaches Environmental Law, Water Law, Florida Water Law, Administrative Law, Civil Procedure, International Biodiversity Law, and seminars on The Environmental Intersection of Land and Sea and the Clean Water Act, plus the Environmental and Land Use Law Certificate Seminar.
Mark Drumbl
Mark A. Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor at Washington & Lee University, School of Law, where he also serves as Director of the Transnational Law Institute. He has held visiting appointments on the law faculties of Oxford University, Université de Paris II (Panthéon-Assas), University of Illinois, Vanderbilt University, University of Ottawa, University of Western Ontario, and Trinity College-Dublin. Professor Drumbl's research and teaching interests include public international law, international criminal law, global environmental governance, and transitional justice. His book, ATROCITY, PUNISHMENT, AND INTERNATIONAL LAW (Cambridge University Press, 2007), which won the 2007 Book of the Year Award of the International Association of Criminal Law (U.S. national section) and has been widely reviewed, rethinks how individuals who perpetrate genocide and crimes against humanity should be punished. His articles have appeared in the NYU, Michigan, Northwestern, George Washington, Tulane, and North Carolina law reviews, and a number of peer-review journals, including Human Rights Quarterly and the American Journal of International Law. His article "Collective Violence and Individual Punishment: The Criminality of Mass Atrocity," 99 Nw. U. L. Rev. 539 (2005) received the Association of American Law Schools Outstanding Scholarly Papers Prize. He has worked as a defense lawyer in Rwanda; has consulted, taught, and lectured world-wide; and has served as an expert in U.S. federal court and U.S. immigration court. Ongoing research projects include the intersection between environmental security and international criminal law.
Bill Hamilton
Bill Hamilton is an Associate Professor of Biology at Washington and Lee University. He received his B.S. from Syracuse University, M.A from SUNY-Buffalo and Ph.D. from Syracuse University. Hamilton's current research focuses on the effects of anthropogenic disturbances on plant-microbial interactions in two systems: 1) Yellowstone National Park and 2) local agricultural systems. His work has been published in Ecology, Oecologia, Plant Physiology, Soil, Biology and Biochemistry, Functional Plant Biology, and The Journal of Integrative Plant Biology. Hamilton currently serves as the chair of the University Sustainability Committee and was integral in the formation of a campus garden which provides organic herbs and produce to the University and local low-income community members.
Erik Luna
Erik Luna is the Hugh B. Brown Chair in Law and Professor of Law at the University of Utah College of Law. He has been a visiting law professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law during the 2008-09 school year and will join the faculty permanently in fall 2009. Professor Luna graduated summa cum laude from the University of Southern California, and he received his J.D. with honors from Stanford Law School, where he was an editor of the Stanford Law Review. Upon graduation, he was a prosecutor in the San Diego District Attorney's Office and a fellow and lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. He has served as the senior Fulbright Scholar to New Zealand, where he taught at Victoria University Law School and conducted research on restorative justice. Professor Luna has also been a visiting professor with the Cuban Society of Penal Sciences and has taught U.S. constitutional law and criminal justice to judges and attorneys in Cuba. In 2007, he was a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg, Germany, the world's foremost center for the comparative study of criminal law and procedure. Professor Luna is an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute, the nation's leading libertarian think tank. Among other professional activities, he is a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Working Group on Criminal Law Issues, he serves on the board of directors for the Rocky Mountain Innocence Center and the Salt Lake Legal Defenders Association, and he is a member of the Utah Supreme Court's Advisory Committee on the Rules of Criminal Procedure. Professor Luna teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, constitutional law, advanced criminal procedure, comparative criminal justice, and juvenile justice.
Linda A. Malone is the Marshall-Wythe Foundation Professor of Law and Director of the Human Security Law Program at the College of William and Mary School of Law. She was a Visiting Professor at Washington and Lee Law School in the spring of 1999. She is a member of the American Law Institute and of the first Environmental Commission of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), and serves on the Board of Directors for the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law. This year she is also co-chair of the International Criminal Law section of the American Society of International Law and on the executive committee of the International Law section of the American Association of Law Schools. Professor Malone is the author of numerous articles in a wide range of publications and has authored and co-authored twelve books on international criminal law, human rights, and environmental law, most recently including DEFENDING THE ENVIRONMENT: CIVIL SOCIETY STRATEGIES TO ENFORCE INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW, published by Island Press, and CRIMINAL LAW (Lexis 2007) co-authored with Cook, Marcus, and Mohr. She has written law review articles, casebooks, treatises, study aids, university press books, mass-market publications, magazine and journal articles, and on-line publications. Her book, ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION OF LAND USE, is the preeminent book in that field. She was also the Associate Editor of the Yearbook of International Environmental Law and has served on the Advisory Council to the National Enforcement Training Institute of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Board of Visitors of Duke Law School, the Board of Directors of the American Agricultural Law Association, the Review Board of the Land Use and Environmental Law Review, and as chair of the agricultural law section of the AALS. She was a delegate to the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio in 1992. She has also served on two committees of the National Academy of Sciences, and is the author of the water quality chapter of the 2005 report of the congressionally created U.S. Ocean Commission. She is a frequent speaker locally, nationally, and internationally, and a frequent commentator for newspapers and other media outlets.
David Markell
David Markell is the Steven M. Goldstein Professor of Law at the Florida State University College of Law. Widely recognized for his scholarship involving environmental and administrative law and policy, Professor Markell has co-authored or co-edited five books and published numerous articles. He is co-author of a leading environmental casebook, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION: LAW AND POLICY (Aspen Law & Business, 5th ed., 2007, and 4th ed. 2003). Other books include REINVENTING THE STATE/FEDERAL RELATIONSHIP IN ENVIRONMENTAL ENFORCEMENT (Environmental Law Institute 2003, co-authored with Professor Clifford Rechtschaffen), and GREENING NAFTA: THE NORTH AMERICAN COMMISSION FOR ENVIRONMENTAL COOPERATION (Stanford University Press 2003, co-edited with Professor John Knox), a book on North American environmental governance. Professor Markell's extensive professional experience in the areas of international and domestic environmental and administrative law includes service as the first Director of the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) citizen submissions process, as Acting Deputy Commissioner for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Office of Environmental Remediation and Director of the DEC Division of Environmental Enforcement, as an attorney with the United States Department of Justice's Environmental Enforcement Section and with the U.S. EPA, and as a mediator and expert witness. Professor Markell also has served as a member of the Organization of American States (OAS) Department of Sustainable Development Environmental Law Advisory Group and as a Special Legal Advisor to the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) Secretariat.
Hari Osofsky
Hari Osofsky is an associate professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law. She received her B.A. and J.D. from Yale University. She currently is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography at the University of Oregon and intends to advance to candidacy in 2009. Osofsky's scholarship focuses on two overlapping areas: (1) climate change and (2) law and geography. Her current writing projects on climate change litigation include several articles, a co-edited book forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, and a casebook complement on climate change and nuisance forthcoming with Aspen Publishers. She also is working on a several articles and a monograph exploring the ways in which geographic perspectives on scale could contribute to legal approaches to cross-cutting problems like climate change and the War on Terror. Her articles have been published and are forthcoming in a variety of journals, including the Washington University Law Quarterly, Villanova Law Review, Chicago Journal of International Law, Stanford Environmental Law Journal, Stanford Journal of International Law, Virginia Journal of International Law, and Yale Journal of International Law. Her advocacy work has included assisting with Earthjustice's annual submissions to the U.N. Human Rights Commission on environmental rights and with the Inuit Circumpolar Conference's petition on climate change to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. She has served as an advisor to the Western Environmental Law Center on climate change litigation, and her fall 2008 Climate Change Litigation Practicum is assisting the Southern Environmental Law Center.
J.B. Ruhl
J. B. Ruhl is the Matthews & Hawkins Professor of Property at Florida State University College of Law, where he teaches courses on environmental law, land use, and property. Previous to joining the FSU faculty in 1999, Professor Ruhl taught at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois (1994-98), and at the George Washington University Law School (1998-99). In the Spring of 2008 he was Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and he has also visited for summer teaching at Vermont Law School, the University of Texas School of Law, and Lewis & Clark College of Law. He is a co-author of two casebooks, THE LAW OF BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT (Foundation Press, 2nd ed. 2006), which is the first casebook to organize environmental law under these emerging themes, and THE PRACTICE AND POLICY OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAW (Foundation Press 2008), which is the only environmental law casebook incorporating a practice context focus. He also recently published THE LAW AND POLICY OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES (Island Press 2007). Prior to entering full-time law teaching, Professor Ruhl was a partner in the law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski, L.L.P., practicing environmental and natural resources law in the firm's Austin, Texas office, and was also an Adjunct Professor of environmental law with the University of Texas School of Law from 1991-94. Professor Ruhl received his B.A. (1979) and J.D. (1982) degrees from the University of Virginia, his LL.M. (1986) in Environmental Law from the George Washington University Law School, and a Ph.D. (2006) in Geography from Southern Illinois University. He is an elected member of The American Law Institute.
Noah Sachs
Noah Sachs is an Assistant Professor at the University of Richmond School of Law and directs the school's Robert R. Merhige, Jr. Center for Environmental Studies. His research focuses on regulation of toxics and hazardous waste, climate change, and transboundary pollution. Professor Sachs' most recent article, "Beyond the Liability Wall: Strengthening Tort Remedies in International Environmental Law," appeared in the UCLA Law Review in spring 2008. Professor Sachs has traveled extensively to environmental hot-spots around the globe, including tropical rain forests, Himalayan biodiversity parks, the Three Gorges Dam in China, and most recently, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. He won a European Union fellowship to travel to Brussels, Belgium, to meet with EU leaders in the environmental field in the fall of 2007. Prior to joining the law school, Professor Sachs was a Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School and practiced environmental law in New York and Boston. He has also held positions at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a grassroots non-profit focusing on nuclear waste issues, EPA's Office of International Activities, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Professor Sachs received his JD from Stanford Law School and his Masters in Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
Nathan Sayre
Nathan Sayre is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of California-Berkeley. His research interests focus on the interactions of climate, vegetation, and management in semiarid grasslands, using historical, geographical, ecological and political economic methods and theories. His current work seeks to integrate these disciplines through a common conceptualization of scale. Sayre also co-developed and co-teaches an undergraduate class on global warming with his colleague, climatologist John Chiang.
Rodney Smolla
Rod Smolla is the Dean and Roy L. Steinheimer, Jr. Professor of the Washington and Lee University School of Law. A graduate of Yale University and Duke Law School, Dean Smolla is nationally recognized as a scholar, teacher, advocate, and writer. His wide-ranging scholarship includes two law school casebooks, four legal treatises, and scores of articles in leading law journals. He also writes widely for general audiences, including popular books such as DELIBERATE INTENT (Crown 1999), FREE SPEECH IN AN OPEN SOCIETY (Alfred A. Knopf 1992), JERRY FALWELL V. LARRY FLINT (St. Martin's 1988), and SUING THE PRESS (Oxford University Press 1986). His book DELIBERATE INTENT was produced as a movie by the FX Network. His commentary appears frequently in national print and electronic media. Smolla's writings have won frequent recognition, including the ABA Silver Gavel Award and the William O. Douglass Award. He has won numerous awards for his teaching, including the Virginia State Council of Higher Education Distinguished Faculty Award. Smolla has also been a nationally prominent advocate in cases involving constitutional law, civil rights, and mass media. He has presented oral argument in state and federal courts throughout the nation, including the Supreme Court of the United States.
Stephanie Stern
Stephanie Stern's scholarship focuses on environmental risk perception and communication, state and local environmental regulation, and property law. She is an assistant professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. She has served as a private consultant on environmental law issues and currently serves on the board of the Center for Urban Environmental Studies. Prior to entering teaching, she worked in regulatory and environmental litigation with Kirkland and Ellis and clerked for the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. She has also served as a fellow at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and as Bigelow fellow at the University of Chicago.
Jonathan Wiener
Jonathan B. Wiener is Perkins Professor of Law, and Professor of Environmental Policy & Public Policy Studies, at Duke University. He is also a University Fellow of Resources for the Future (RFF). In 2008, he served as President of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA). In 2003 he received the Chauncey Starr Young Risk Analyst Award from the SRA for the most exceptional contributions to the field of risk analysis by a scholar aged 40 or under. He has been a visiting professor at Sciences Po (2008), the University of Chicago Law School (2007), EHESS and CIRED in Paris (2005-06), and Harvard Law School (1999). From 2000-05 he was the founding Faculty Director of the Duke Center for Environmental Solutions. He has written widely on U.S., European, and international environmental law and risk regulation, including the books THE REALITY OF PRECAUTION (forthcoming), RECONSTRUCTING CLIMATE POLICY (2003, with Richard B. Stewart) and RISK VS. RISK (1995, with John D. Graham). Before coming to Duke in 1994, he worked on U.S. and international environmental policy at the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and at the US Department of Justice, in both the Clinton and Bush-41 (father) administrations. He helped negotiate the Framework Convention on Climate Change, and attended the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. In 1993 he helped draft President Clinton's Executive Order 12866 on Regulatory Review, and helped launch the Americorps National Service program. Professor Wiener clerked for Judge (now U.S. Supreme Court Justice) Stephen G. Breyer on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston in 1988-89, and for Chief Judge Jack B. Weinstein on the U.S. District Court in New York in 1987-88. He received his A.B. in economics (1984) and J.D. (1987) from Harvard University.
David Wirth
David A. Wirth is Professor of Law at Boston College Law School in Newton, Massachusetts, where he teaches primarily in the field of public international law, with a specialty in international environmental law. Prior to entering academia, Professor Wirth was Senior Attorney and Co-Director of the International Program at the Washington, D.C. office of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a nonprofit public interest law firm specializing in environmental issues. Professor Wirth has also been Attorney-Adviser for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., where he had principal responsibility for all international environmental issues. Professor Wirth is a 1981 graduate of the Yale Law School and served as law clerk to Judge William H. Timbers of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York for a year thereafter. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in chemistry from, respectively, Princeton and Harvard Universities. Professor Wirth is the author of more than five dozen books, articles, and reports on international environmental law and policy for both legal and popular audiences. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Tseming Yang
Tseming Yang is professor of law and director of the U.S. AID-funded Vermont Law School - Sun Yat-sen University Partnership for Environmental Law in China. Professor Yang's research and teaching focus on US and international environmental law, including environmental justice, global climate change and China's environmental laws. From 1998 to 2003, he served as a member of EPA's National Environmental Justice Advisory Council and chaired the International Subcommittee. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School and a Fulbright lecturer at the Tsinghua University School of Law in Beijing, China. Professor Yang received his BA degree in biochemistry, magna cum laude, from Harvard University and his JD degree from Boalt Hall School of Law of the University of California, Berkeley, where he served as articles editor on the California Law Review. Prior to joining the Vermont Law School faculty in 1998, he clerked for the Honorable Rudi M. Brewster of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, practiced law with the firm of Latham and Watkins in San Francisco, and served as an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice's Environment and Natural Resources Division. He received tenure in 2003.
Contact Information
For more information about this event, contact Jennifer Lin at linjw@wlu.edu.