Joint Letters from CPR re Administrative Law Judges

Victor B. Flatt is the  Dwight Olds Chair and Faculty Director of the Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Center, University of Houston Law Center, and a Distinguished Scholar, Global Energy Management Institute at the University of Houston.

Professor Flatt's teaching and research emphasis are focused in the areas of environmental and administrative law. He has taught Environmental Law, the Law of Hazardous Waste, International Environmental Law, Administrative Law, Property, Constitutional Law, and Torts.

Professor Flatt recently worked with the City of Houston and the Natural Resources Defense Council on Residual Risks from air toxics. He served on the Board of Directors of the Georgia Center for Law in The Public Interest, which won the Hankinson case regarding the establishment of Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) in Georgia. He regularly teaches courses to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Professionals on Environmental Law. He advises government, non-profit and private organizations such as the Sierra Club, the Blue Skies Initiative and the Greater Houston Association for Smog Prevention (GHASP). He is a speaker at numerous forums including EPA programs, the Sea Grant Program, and Continuing Legal Education programs. He recently represented U.S. Senators Clinton, Boxer, Kerry, Lautenberg, Jeffords, and Leahy as amici in the New York v. EPA case.

Before law school, Professor Flatt was the Analytical Lab Coordinator for the Student Environmental Health Project at Vanderbilt University. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Danny J. Boggs of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and was in private practice in environmental law in Seattle, Washington, at the law firm of Hillis Clark Martin & Peterson, where he specialized in a multi-permit, multi-jurisdictional compliance practice. Before becoming the A.L. O'Quinn Chair in Environmental Law at the University of Houston Law Center, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington Evans School of Public Affairs and then Associate and Full Professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Georgia, the University of Washington, and Seattle University.

Professor Flatt has published extensively in numerous journals including the Notre Dame Law Review, Hastings Law Journal, the University of Washington Law Review, Environmental Law and Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review. Four of his articles were either finalists or selected for the year end "Best of Environmental and Land use law" compendium. Professor Flatt is an author of Legal Protection of the Environment for West Publishing, along with co-authors William Funk and Craig Johnston. He is author of the current Colloquy on Climate Change Legislation in the Northwestern University Law Review.

Professor Flatt served on the Testing Development and Research Committee of the Law School Admissions Council, and was on the National Board of Directors for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund for five years.

Victor Flatt
University of Houston Law Center
4604 Calhoun Road
Houston, TX 77204-6060
713-743-2100
email
website
SSRN

Robert L. Glicksman is the J. B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law at the George Washington University Law School. He is a member of the board of directors of the Center for Progressive Reform.

Professor Glicksman has expertise in both of the two main branches of environmental law, pollution control and public natural resources law.  His recent research has focused largely on climate change issues, public natural resources issues, and the intersection of the two. He has taught three different environmental law courses -- a survey course covering both of these branches and more specialized courses in regulation of air and water pollution and toxic substances and hazardous waste regulation. He also regularly teaches property law (including regulatory takings cases involving environmental controls) and administrative law. Professor Glicksman has written on all of these topics for more than 25 years.

Professor Glicksman worked in private practice for four years after graduating from the Cornell Law School. He practiced for Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, a nationally recognized law firm with an office in Washington, D.C., serving industrial clients in the energy and chemical industries. Professor Glicksman returned to private practice in 1993-94 while on leave from the University of Kansas. During that time, he worked for Lowenstein Sandler, a firm in Roseland, N.J. with a thriving environmental law practice, providing advice to clients on hazardous waste-related issues.

In addition to his experiences in private practice, Professor Glicksman served as a consultant to the Secretariat for the Commission for Environmental Cooperation. The CEC is an international organization established by the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (the environmental side agreement to NAFTA) on issues pertaining to the resolution of international disputes among Canada, Mexico, and the United States on issues of both domestic and international environmental law. Professor Glicksman's role was to provide advice concerning the proper disposition of submissions by NGOs seeking a finding by the CEC that the signatory parties have failed to effectively enforce their environmental laws.

Professor Glicksman has published widely in the areas of pollution control, public natural resources management, and administrative law. His book Risk Regulation At Risk: Restoring a Pragmatic Balance (Stanford University Press 2003, with Sidney Shapiro), takes issue with the notion that economic efficiency should be the sole or even principal criterion governing the establishment and implementation of laws and regulations designed to reduce the health and environmental risks attributable to industrial activities. The authors urge instead a pragmatic approach to risk regulation that takes into account other values. Professor Glicksman is the lead co-author of an environmental law casebook, Environmental Protection: Law and Policy (Aspen Law and Business), now in its fifth edition (with Professors Markell, Buzbee, Mandelker, and Tarlock). Professor Glicksman is also the co-author (with George C. Coggins) of the leading treatise on public land and resource management, Public Natural Resources Law, (now in its second edition), as well as a student nutshell on the same subject, Modern Public Land Law (now in its third edition). He has also contributed a chapter entitled, “Federal Preemption by Inaction,” in Preemptive Choice: The Theory, Law, and Reality of Federalism’s Core Question, 2009, edited by fellow CPR Member Scholar William Buzbee, and “Environmental Law,” in Kansas Annual Survey, 2007.

Professor Glicksman's law review articles have been published in journals that include the Pennsylvania Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Vanderbilt Law Review, the Wake Forest Law Review, the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, the Stanford Environmental Law Journal, the UCLA Journal of Environmental Law and Policy, the Virginia Environmental Law Journal, the Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, the William & Mary Environmental Law & Policy Review, the Oregon Law Review, the Loyola Law Review, The Administrative Law Review, the Chicago-Kent Law Review, and the Denver University Law Review. Two of Professor Glicksman's articles on judicial review of environmental decision-making (co-authored with Christopher Schroeder, a CPR Board member), have been singled out for recognition as the best in the field for a particular year and have been republished in the Land Use & Environment Law Review. A third article by Professor Glicksman on regulatory takings was also republished in that review. Another of Professor Glicksman's articles, on the Supreme Court and its treatment of environmental law issues, was designated in 1994 by Professor William Rodgers of the University of Washington as one of the 25 best environmental law articles ever written.

Professor Glicksman was instrumental in the expansion of the environmental law curriculum at the University of Kansas School of Law. He helped to establish a certificate program in environmental and natural resources law. He is now the J.B. & Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law at the George Washington University Law School. 

Robert Glicksman
The George Washington University Law School
2000 H Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20052
202.994.4641

email
website

Thomas O. McGarity holds the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair in Administrative Law at the University of Texas in Austin. He is a member of the board of directors of the Center for Progressive Reform, and a past president of the organization.

Professor McGarity has taught and written in the areas of Administrative Law, Environmental Law, Occupational Safety and Health Law, Food Safety Law, Science and the Law, and Torts for twenty-five years.

While in academia, McGarity has served as a consultant and/or advisor to the Administrative Conference of the United States, the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress (OTA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Texas Department of Agriculture, and the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. With Professor Sidney A. Shapiro, Professor McGarity designed and helped initiate a rulemaking prioritization process for OSHA rulemaking during the early 1990s. As a consultant to OTA, Professor McGarity helped write the "Regulatory Tools" report that agencies have frequently cited in designing regulatory programs. As a consultant to the Texas Department of Agriculture, McGarity was a primary draftsperson of that agency's first farmworker protection regulations in the late 1980s. During the mid-1990s, he was also actively involved in the drafting of and negotiations surrounding the federal Food Quality Protection Act.

Professor McGarity began his legal career in the Office of General Counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency. In the private sector, Professor McGarity has served as counsel or consultant in various legal and administrative proceedings to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Public Citizen, the Sierra Club, the American Lung Association, the National Audubon Society, Texas Rural Legal Aid, California Rural Legal Aid, and many local organizations, including, for example, The Bear Creek Citizens for the Best Environment Ever. McGarity has also served on many advisory committees for such entities as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of Technology Assessment, and the National Academy of Sciences.

Professor McGarity has published widely in the areas of regulatory law and policy. His book Reinventing Rationality analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of cost-benefit analysis in regulatory decision-making and describes the use of such regulatory impact assessments by federal agencies and the Office of Management and Budget during the Reagan Administration. Workers at Risk, co-authored with Sidney A. Shapiro, describes rulemaking, implementation and enforcement in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from its inception in 1970 through 1990. The book then analyzes OSHA's strengths and weaknesses and makes many recommendations for improving standard-setting and enforcement. McGarity's casebook, The Law of Environmental Protection, co-authored with John Bonine, has been used in introductory Environmental Law courses at law schools throughout the country. His relatively recent books include The Preemption War: When Federal Bureaucracies Trump Local Juries, Yale University Press 2008, and Bending Science: How Special Interest Corrupt Public Health Research, Harvard University Press 2008, co-authored with fellow CPR Member Scholar Wendy Wagner.

Professor McGarity has published dozens of articles on environmental law, administrative law, and toxic torts in prominent law reviews, such as the Harvard Law Review, Chicago Law Review, Pennsylvania Law Review and Law & Contemporary Problems, as well as in specialty journals, such as the Administrative Law Review, the Harvard Environmental Law Review, Risk, and the Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy, and consumer magazines like the American Prospect and the Hastings Center Report. McGarity has written on federal regulation of biotechnology since the advent of the commercialization of recombinant DNA techniques, and his article in the Duke Law Journal on the "ossification" of the federal rulemaking process, which elaborates on the dangers of encumbering the process of promulgating health and environmental rules with burdensome analytical requirements and review procedures, is frequently cited in the recurrent "regulatory reform" debates.

Professor McGarity has been an active participant in efforts to improve health, safety and environmental quality in the United States. He has testified before many congressional committees on environmental, administrative law, preemption of state tort laws in cases involving medical devices, and occupational safety and health issues. During the first session of the 104th Congress (the "Gingrich" Congress), Professor McGarity was frequently the lone representative of the view that federal regulation had an important role to play in protecting public health and the environment on panels testifying before House and Senate Committee considering "regulatory reform" legislation. Professor McGarity has also participated in path-breaking legal challenges to government inaction like Environmental Defense Fund v. Blum (a challenge to EPA's decision to allow further use of the carcinogenic pesticide mirex through emergency use exemptions) and Les v. Reilly (a challenge to EPA's failure to establish protective tolerances for eight carcinogenic pesticides). As a result of the latter litigation, the pesticide industry was forced to accept the greater protections afforded children in the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996. 

Thomas McGarity
The University of Texas School of Law
Austin, TX
512.232.1384
email
website

Matthew Shudtz, J.D., is the former Executive Director of the Center for Progressive Reform. He joined CPR in 2006 as policy analyst, after graduating law school with a certificate in environmental law, and left the organization in 2020 to see to family needs amidst the coronavirus pandemic. As a staff attorney in the Environmental Law Clinic, he worked on litigation with the Environmental Integrity Project that led to a consent decree in which the Mirant Corporation agreed to comply with newer, more stringent opacity and particulate matter standards for its Chalk Point generating station, one of the largest power plants in Maryland.

Mr. Shudtz’s prior experience in the public interest field also includes work for the Natural Resources Defense Council, where he was a legal intern. While at NRDC, he provided research and drafting support in FIFRA and CAA litigation, and CWA regulatory affairs. He also worked as a legal/legislative intern at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation during the 2005 Session of the Maryland General Assembly. He received his J.D. from the University of Maryland and a B.S. from Columbia University.

Contact Information: 202.747.0698 ex. 1 email

Katie Tracy, J.D., is a CPR Senior Policy Analyst focused on workers’ rights policy. Her previous experience includes working for more than two years as a regulatory policy analyst at the Center for Effective Government, where she advocated for strong regulations to protect health, safety, and the environment. She has also produced a report examining OSHA’s whistleblower protection program and proposing model state legislation to protect workers from retaliation.

Tracy received her law degree from American University Washington College of Law in 2012 and her B.S. in Business Administration from College of Charleston in 2008. During law school, she served as a Note and Comment Editor for the Administrative Law Review and as a Senior Editor for the Sustainable Development Law & Policy brief. She also worked as a legal intern in the office of a Maryland state senator, at Public Citizen, and at the Environmental Law Institute.

Contact Information: 202.747.0698 ex. 7 email