Environmental Law, Politics, and Sustainable Development

Catalog description

How can businesses, governments, and public interest groups achieve environmentally sustainable development goals in legal and political contexts that were designed with other goals in mind? This course explores the options in the United States, with some reference to other countries and the international arena as points of comparison. Students spend some of the course learning how to spot facts that give rise to compliance issues for businesses and other private parties under U.S. environmental laws. Students spend the rest of the course learning how to predict and how to shape environmental law and policy outcomes in a political system that was designed to privilege special interests and to favor the status quo. Along the way, students explore the legal and political constraints on efforts to achieve sustainable development goals in the United States.