This course addresses environmental justice as a legal and social concern. Using case studies, academic literature, and other materials, we will engage with the history of environmental injustices inflicted upon traditionally disenfranchised communities and the rise of the environmental justice movement in response. In doing so, we examine the legal and social tools with which the environmental justice movement operates, and the barriers to achieving environmental justice.
The animal law litigation, legislation, and policy course will illustrate how animal laws are drafted and become law, and ultimately litigated. The class will include a discussion of alternative dispute resolution, negotiated settlements, and oral and written advocacy, including appeals. “Real world” lawyering skills will be taught through writing assignments, advocacy role-playing, and mock oral arguments. Legal and political considerations will be included, as well as drafting of animal law legislation, ordinances, and legal documents.
This course provides an introduction to Water Law and Policy, a subject of great import to practitioners of environmental law, property law, international law, and other fields that contend with the allocation of scarce water resources among competing human, economic, and environmental needs. Water management is especially important in Florida, which lies over the largest freshwater aquifer in the world, and Florida has become a leader in modern regulatory approaches.
This class explores the interdisciplinary issues surrounding the problem of climate change, perhaps the most vexing and dangerous of environmental or social problems ever to confront humankind. The objective is to prepare students for areas of law – most of which are in early developmental stages – that affect climate change or adapt to climate change. In so doing, this seminar will require students to delve into not only the developing legal issues of climate change, but also the scientific, economic, technological, and psychological aspects of climate change.
Much federal environmental law depends critically on the implementation of compatible state law. This is a survey course in environmental, natural resource, energy, and land use law in the State of Florida emphasizing the importance of this cooperative federalism relationship in environmental protection. The course is intended to provide a combination of review of substantive state law and skills training especially for, but not limited to students expecting to practice in the State of Florida.
This course will explore the law that applies to extracting and transporting oil and gas resources in the United States. The first several days of the course will describe the process of locating minerals underground and drilling and hydraulic fracturing for natural gas and oil, as these processes and technical terms for these processes will arise in many of the cases that we will explore.
This course introduces the theory and practice of negotiation in a workshop setting. We will examine the basic stages of a negotiation; the major tensions at play in negotiation; distributive bargaining, value-creating, and problem-solving techniques; the management of communication and emotional elements in negotiation; power dynamics and ethics; lawyer-client relationships, and other topics as time allows.
The powers, limitations, and special legal rules concerning state and local governments are studied.
A study of the Florida Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and its interpretation by the courts. Major emphasis is placed on theories of delegation to administrative agencies, points of entry to obtain administrative review, and the relationship between the roles of administrative law judges, agency heads, and reviewing courts. Topics covered include the non-delegation doctrine, adjudication, non-rule policy, attorneys' fees, rule-making, rule challenges, bid protests, the statement of regulatory costs, judicial review, and formal legislative oversight.
This course will help students develop the sophisticated research skills necessary for the effective practice of environmental law. Topics include: Statutes and legislative history documents, regulations, judicial opinions, agency documents, international environmental conventions and interpretations, and scientific and economic literature related to environmental law. Grading will be based upon short weekly assignments, class participation and the creation of a research guide in one specific area of environmental law.
