Overview

The graduate certificate in Environmental Law & Policy will provide students with comprehensive instruction on how ethics, politics, and science policy influence the natural environment and shape human relationships to it, at local, national and international levels of organization. Through these programs, students will have the unique opportunity to learn how to analyze present law and to address its deficiencies by creating new policy designs. Teaching both the theory and practice of environmental law and policy, the certificate will integrate practical and career oriented expertise in the existing positive law that regulates environmental pollution, planning and land use with consideration of how different policy design paradigms can change current policy to respond to past failures and future expectations. This certificate and its courses can be used toward the new MA in Policy Design (pending for 2007).

Who should have a Certificate?

Overall, because the certificate is designed to enhance a person's existing working knowledge in the environment with a new expertise in legal and policy analysis, it would be of interest to anyone who wants basic and practical training in environmental law, for new career directions, or for application to their existing profession. Designed for practicing professionals, classes are scheduled evenings. The certificate should be of interest to professionals already working in

• The environmental arena
• Law
• Business
• Engineering
• Sciences
• Policy-makers at all levels of government who must routinely handle legal affairs.

Admission Criteria

• The certificate assumes no specific legal background
• Open to those with a background in either the social or natural sciences (or both)
• Required BA/BS or its equivalent including at least two courses in the social sciences and two courses in the natural sciences or mathematics, as well as competence in English

The Program

The certificate is a four-course program involving at least one course from each of the two core groups and two other courses from either the core groups or outside electives in consultation with the student's advisor. At least 6 credits must be taken at the 400 level and the course of study must be completed in a maximum of 3 years.

Core Courses In Environmental Law

• ES 331/431: U.S. Environmental Law I: Pollution & Risk Abatement (Gillroy)
• ES 432: U.S. Environmental Law II: Natural Resources & Public Lands (Gillroy)
• ES 333/433: International Environmental Law & Policy (Gillroy)
• ES 343/443: Comparative Environmental Law & Policy (Gillroy)

Core Courses In Policy Analysis, Valuation & The Law

• ES 435: Environmental Valuation For Policy Design & Legal Analysis (Holland)
• ES 336/436: Environmental Justice & The Law (Holland)
• ES 338/438: Environmental Risk: Perception & Communication (Briggs)
• ES 437: Environmental Risk: Decision Making & Management (Briggs)

Course Descriptions

U.S. Environmental Law I: Pollution & Risk Abatement

The purpose of this course is to study the practical reality of environmental regulation as codified law. It is also aimed at understanding the law's foundation in argument and justification as both existing law and proposed policy. We shall approach the reading of cases, statutes, and regulations on air, water, risk, waste and environmental impact with two theoretical models: the Market Sector Approach and the Ecosystem Approach, each with a distinct process model raised upon distinctive sets of normative principles. Utilizing these two legal paradigms for charting the relationship between humanity and nature, we will examine a wide range of environmental law being aware of its ethical, political, economic, scientific, and policy dimensions. (Gillroy, ES 331/431)

U.S. Environmental Law II: Natural Resources & Public Lands

The purpose of this course is to combine a study of natural resources law with an understanding of the politics and legal processes that create, change, and regulate the economic use of nature. We shall approach extraction law with two models of regulation: the Market Sector Approach and the Ecosystem Approach. Utilizing these two standards for charting the relationship between humanity and nature, we will analyze timber, water, mineral extraction, public lands regulations, wildlife, wilderness and federal planning and environmental impact assessment in terms of its ethical, political, economic and policy components. Our goal is to acquire a full grasp of the legal dynamics of extraction as it applies to the use of nature, not only as the existing positive law describes it, but as alternative moral and legal imperatives say it could be in the future. (Gillroy, ES 432)

International Environmental Law & Policy

This course examines the basic international legal setting for the protection and management of the environment. It examines how international law is made and applied, the role of international environmental regimes or institutions, enforcement strategies, and compliance mechanisms. Emphasis will be placed on human rights and the environment, the interface of free trade and environmental protection, the protection of biodiversity, North-South issues, as well as a review of various regulatory regimes for the protection of the global commons, including the history and legal sources of the Global Climate Change Convention. (Gillroy, ES 333/433)

Comparative Environmental Law & Policy

This course will study the different ways in which domestic legal systems handle the regulation of humanity's relationship to the natural world. The first part of the course will be a study of comparative law that will examine the evolution of distinct types of legal systems from their origins in the ancient world (e.g., Roman Law). The second part of the course will specifically and comparatively examine environmental law as it has developed in Canada, China, the European Union and the United States. Overall, we are interested in exploring the range of alternatives for environmental law and policy as practiced in various parts of the world and in creating arguments not only about how environmental law is created but the pros and cons of the different ways humanity has found to regulate its relationship to nature. (Gillroy, ES 343/443)

Environmental Valuation For Policy Design & Legal Analysis

Review of history and legal context giving rise to current use of the "contingent valuation method" for pricing environmental resources. Assessment of the empirical and normative strengths of this method, as well as the weaknesses that challenge its effectiveness and political legitimacy. Evaluation of the recent turn to "deliberative" methods of resource valuation. Consideration of empirical and normative problems deliberative methods address and problems that remain. Common problems that challenge resource valuation, such as the influence of uninformed preferences, difficulties that arise in monetizing ecological goods and services, and bias that results from differences in individual wealth and power. (Holland, ES 435)

Environmental Justice & The Law

An in-depth exploration of the various ways in which environmental law and policy can have discriminatory effects. Rise and evolution of the environmental justice movement. Impact of environmental justice claims on administrative rulemaking at both the state and federal level. History of case law concerning environmental justice suits filed under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The future of environmental justice in environmental law and policy. (Holland, ES 336/436)

Environmental Risk: Perception & Communication

Starting with the distinction between traditional pollution problems and environmental risk, this course will focus on risk as it is perceived from outside the institutional policy process and how risk dilemmas are communicated from that institutional structure to experts and the public at large. This course will examine perception and communication experiences within the United States, and abroad. (Briggs, ES 338/438)

Environmental Risk: Decision Making & Management

Starting with the distinction between traditional pollution problems and environmental risk, this course will focus on the internal dynamics of the risk policy process in terms of the formulation of law and policy in response to the characteristics of various risk dilemmas. Alternative policy paradigms for risk choices and the management of environmental risk will be examined as will the standing law regulating risk in the United States, abroad, and in terms of international governance. (Briggs, ES 437)