Teaching Environmental Law in Context by Bratspies, Rebecca M.; Gonzalez, Carmen G.;

Short description:

This highly-informative book provides problems, tools, and guidance for teaching environmental law in a time of turmoil. Rebecca Bratspies and Carmen Gonzalez clarify key, often unexplored, first principles behind environmental regulation, enabling teachers to confidently navigate the material and enhance their expertise.

Long description:

This highly-informative book provides tools and guidance for teaching environmental law in a time of turmoil. Rebecca Bratspies and Carmen Gonzalez clarify key, often unexplored, first principles behind environmental regulation, enabling teachers to confidently navigate the material and enhance their expertise.

The authors trace the crucial history of each major federal environmental statute and provide an accessible overview of each statute’s major provisions. By integrating a statute’s social and political context with its regulatory structure, they demonstrate how to incorporate environmental justice throughout a course and help students understand the life-and-death stakes behind seemingly technical regulatory choices. Each chapter includes practical teaching exercises that integrate history, justice, science, and law into classroom learning. Above all, Bratspies and Gonzalez offer numerous practical examples. Each chapter is full of teaching tips and problems designed to start hard, interesting conversations, allowing students to master technical materials while grappling with social justice implications.

Teaching Environmental Law in Context is an essential read for educators interested in bringing environmental justice into their classrooms or developing comparative and interdisciplinary courses in environmental law and policy. It is a valuable reference for government officials and activists looking to gain insight into environmental advocacy strategies. Scholars and students seeking concise summaries of foundational topics in environmental law will also find this book relevant.

‘This is an important and timely book that emphasizes the centrality of environmental justice to the practice of environmental law.’

Table of Contents:

Contents
List of teaching exercises
Supplementary materials
1 Introduction: teaching environmental law in context
2 From common law to legislation and back again
3 Quantitative risk assessment
4 Cost-benefit analysis
5 The regulation of toxic chemicals
6 Environmental impact assessment: NEPA and SEPAs
7 Water is life—part 1: the Clean Water Act
8 Water is life—part 2: the Safe Drinking Water Act
9 Teaching the Clean Air Act
10 The problem of waste—part 1: the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
11 The problem of waste—part 2: CERCLA and the legacy of contamination
12 Teaching climate change
13 The right to a healthy environment and state constitutional law
14 U.S. environmental cases in international human rights forums