Why We Wrote Teaching Environmental Law in Context

This post is part of a series related to Teaching Environmental Law in Context, a recent book by Member Scholars Rebecca Bratspies and Carmen Gonzalez.

My book with fellow Member Scholar Rebecca Bratspies was inspired by an article written by former UN Special Rapporteur (and Member Scholar) John Knox (and co-author Nicole Tronolone) evaluating U.S. environmental law through the framework of international human rights law. With several noteworthy exceptions (such as climate change), Knox and Tronolone concluded that the U.S. (at the end of the Biden administration) generally complied with the substantive and procedural requirements of the right to a healthy environment. However, they described the government’s failure to address environmental injustice as nothing short of “catastrophic.”

Far from remedying these shortcomings, the current administration is reinforcing them, as regulatory rollbacks proliferate, equity-based initiatives are dismantled, and coordinated political campaigns seek to ban the teaching of "divisive concepts" such as climate change and racial justice.

How do we engage and inspire our students during these turbulent times? Our book, Teaching Environmental Law in Context (Edward Elgar 2026), offers strategies and numerous teaching tips, tools, exercises, and case studies to keep hope alive and impart the knowledge and skills needed for effective environmental advocacy.

Teaching Environmental Law in Context is designed as a companion to the leading environmental law textbooks. The book provides an accessible introduction to the major environmental statutes and regulatory tools (such as risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis) in social and historical context — highlighting key, often unexplored core principles.

It demonstrates how to integrate environmental justice into every topic taught in foundational and specialized environmental law courses and provides numerous tools and teaching exercises that faculty can use — including case studies, short videos, problem exercises, and interactive classroom exercises.

The bulk of the book focuses on the major environmental statutes — the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, or Superfund), the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and the Safe Drinking Water Act. For each statute, the book integrates the statute’s social and political context with its regulatory structure and shows faculty how to simultaneously teach history, legal doctrine, and practice-based skills.

Other chapters provide a critical introduction to cost-benefit analysis and risk assessment — foundational tools in environmental regulation whose value-laden impacts on regulatory choices are typically uninterrogated.

The book ends with chapters on topics that are not usually covered in foundational environmental law courses due to lack of time or expertise. These include teaching the law and science of climate change, the landmark state court litigation on the right to a healthy environment, and the increasing use of international human rights bodies by U.S. environmental advocates. These chapters can be used to highlight the places and topics where progress is being made and to incorporate cutting edge legal developments and breaking news into the classroom, including climate litigation, the green energy transition, and the Advisory Opinions on climate change issued by the International Court of Justice and Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The book also highlights creative approaches adopted by states to address climate change, toxic chemicals, and the siting of polluting industry — reminding students of the important role of states in environmental protection and providing inspiring success stories.

The Trump administration’s dismantling of environmental and racial justice initiatives has increased student demand for legal education that addresses the intersection of environmental, social, and economic inequities. Students are primed for new approaches, and we hope that our book will help legal educators meet that demand.

• By providing historical context, our book enables faculty to teach students that environmental law is cyclical — that it experiences periods of expansion and rollback. Understanding this dynamic helps students persevere in the face of current challenges.
• By emphasizing creative problem-solving (including state law examples), our book illustrates that environmental law has always evolved in response to new challenges and encourages students to think boldly and creatively.
• By presenting the science of toxicology and the economics of cost-benefit analysis in an accessible manner, our book can help students overcome math and science phobia — and understand and critique the assumptions that are embedded in seemingly neutral regulatory tools.
• By introducing human rights-based approaches to environmental protection, our book highlights regulatory paradigms that emphasize equitable outcomes rather than technical compliance with regulatory standards.
• By integrating racial and economic justice into every topic, our book provides faculty with the tools to help students re-imagine and re-construct U.S. environmental law in a manner that reproduces its strengths and addresses its glaring shortcomings.

Once the dust storm has settled, it will be necessary to rebuild what has been destroyed — and that rebuilding needs to be informed by a clear-eyed assessment of the achievements of U.S. environmental law and its catastrophic failures.