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.
Those of us who teach environmental law, be it domestic or international, are compelled to revisit how we teach those courses along with how we even choose to engage our students in these perilous times. This exercise is all the more difficult given the dejection left in the wake of a debilitating bombardment of bad news stories about our field.
At a recent gathering of natural resources law teachers in New Mexico over summer, it was clear that the entire environmental law teaching community is grappling with this challenge. Academy members of the American Bar Association’s Section on Environment, Energy, and Resources are responding to a call from its chief policymaking body to provide resources to embed sustainability and climate change within legal education through a website of resources.
Among those resources is an invaluable one that deserves a longer mention: Teaching Environmental Law in Context (Elgar, 2026) by the effervescent and indomitable academic duo, Rebecca Bratspies and Carmen Gonzalez.
Thanks to a timely invitation from the authors to participate in a Law & Society Association roundtable discussion, I found myself immersed in their book over the winter break. It had two profound impacts: first, inspiring new and different pathways to teach students, and second, to propel me into a different, more positive head space.
As an international environmental law professor and scholar, and given my role as Chair of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law’s newest Specialist Group on Human Rights and the Environment, I found myself gravitating toward Chapter 14 and its reflection on U.S.-based environmental cases in international human rights forums.
I am a firm believer in the need to connect “the local” to “the global” and vice versa in all teaching. The effects of globalization on our current economic, social, and environmental context demand this more holistic understanding. And so, I found a kindred approach in the chapter’s efforts to demonstrate the continuous back-and-forth of influence between international law and domestic U.S. law, something that is less commonly appreciated in American legal education than in other parts of the world.
Whether I am teaching International Environmental Law or giving a guest lecture in an Environmental Law Survey course, this context of local-global interplay is one that I always seek to highlight. It was comforting to see that the chapter reinforced some of my existing teaching in this way, while providing new examples for me to utilize. Most notable is the case study in Teaching Exercise 14.1: A Tale of Two Toxic Cities. Here, the authors do a remarkable job of identifying the connections between a city, La Oroya in Peru, and Herculaneum in Missouri. Even more fascinating is that the metallurgical complex in La Oroya and the lead smelter in Herculaneum were owned by the same company, and both had similar adverse environmental and health impacts on their communities. The way that the authors then use international human rights law, such as the right to a healthy environment and the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, to help students see how international law can ground advocacy and action is powerful.
A few years back, I used to co-teach an Introduction to Environmental Law course for a Master’s in Environmental Policy program at the School of Public Administration at The George Washington University. Though we included a module on international environmental law and its impact and influence on U.S. environmental law and vice versa, we did not draw on a comparative case study to illustrate this concept. The La Oroya-Herculaneum comparison is an excellent case study for such situations and would also be useful for teaching similar courses in other parts of the world. Naturally, I intend to use it in future lectures and interactions with students at our partner university, Cientifica Law School in Peru.
At the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University (Haub Law), I also teach an Environmental Law Externship course which focuses on teaching students environmental lawyering skills to supplement their externships at environmental organizations. While I usually discuss how law societies around the world are addressing what it means to be in the legal profession in these challenging times (building on my work as an ABA Delegate at international climate conferences and drawing on the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion), I typically did not incorporate International Human Rights Law into the course.
Rebecca and Carmen’s book, however, inspired two new lines of inquiry: (1) How does the work being done at a student’s externship organization engage with human rights at all?; (2) Given some of the ways that International Human Rights Law uses education, awareness, and transparency — for example, the UN Human Rights Council and Universal Periodic Review, the use of special rapporteurs, and shadow reports — are there alternate pathways that students might pursue as U.S. advocates?
As I pondered more about the overall utility of this book, my mind turned to a three-day bootcamp I organize for students undertaking the DC Environmental Law Externship course. Mostly geared toward 1Ls, it involves an introduction to the main environmental law statutes in short 30-60-minute blocks. Much of it involves reviewing a history of deregulation and uncertainty, which often leaves students in despair. It is also not easy to get 1Ls without prior exposure to environmental law to retain the often technical content of U.S. environmental statutes.
Some of the exercises in this book offer simple and digestible ways to show how each statute functions in reality. For instance, the chapter on the Safe Drinking Water Act does this quite well, asking students to recognize the difference between feasibility-based and health-based standards, by asking them to make a choice between a glass of water with the maximum contaminant level goal (MCLG) for arsenic and a maximum contaminant level (MCL) for arsenic. What a choice to have to make!
At Haub Law, I wear many hats. The nature of my role as Executive Director of the Environmental Law Program means I get to meet students at different moments in their law school journey, not just in class. There are case studies and approaches in this book that I can bring up in those many teaching moments. For instance, I serve as the primary advisor to approximately 40 students in each cohort who choose to pursue an Advanced Certificate in Environmental Law and support at least 10 students each year who are pursuing an LLM or SJD in Environmental Law. Reminding students to situate their learning in context, from 1L courses to advanced electives, is an opportunity that I relish. I also counsel these students on potential environmental law careers. The many leading advocates in the book’s case studies serve as useful reminders of the many ways in which environmental law may be practiced.
Imagine broadening your students’ horizons, while at the same time ensuring that environmental law is promoted and practiced beyond the constraints set by governments, society, and politics. In short, moving from teaching environmental law in context to promoting its practice in context. I am also fortunate enough to be the faculty advisor for our 180+ student strong Environmental Law Society, giving me additional opportunities to integrate some of the horizon-widening lessons in this book into the activities, projects, and events led by our most active student organization.
As a final thought, it is impossible to ignore the eco-trauma and -anxiety underpinning many conversations among colleagues and students these days. With much gratitude to the positive swing in mindset that this publication induced, I hope to try something new in my teaching this year: radical positivism.
Will students problem-solve environmental issues better if they are exposed to a host of victories in environmental law, as opposed to the onslaught of troubling news in the media?
I am curious and hopeful with this new-found inspiration.
