Fall 2024
Professor(s):
Tracy Hester (DIRECTOR/SUPERVISOR )
Credits: 3
Course Areas: Energy, Natural Resources and Environmental Law
Time: 6:00p-7:30p TTH Location: 311
Course Outline: Environmental law plays a pivotal role in protecting our personal health and welfare, guiding economic development and business life, and shielding our most precious natural treasures and resources from misuse or harm. Because it protects such broad and often conflicting purposes, environmental law has evolved from its common law roots into a complex set of federal and state statutory protections, administrative regulatory prohibitions, and often convoluted judicial interpretations. This course will introduce you to the broad field of environmental law and give you a practical sense of the key skills and tools you would need to start handling environmental projects.
This course will use a combination of lectures, class discussions, in-class exercises and sample problems, and case studies. We will use role-playing exercises to give you experience in real-life negotiations. The course will start with theoretical overviews of the commonality of environmental laws and will then focus on specific statutes, including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, RCRA, CERCLA, and the Endangered Species Act.
Course Syllabus: Syllabus
Course Notes: (Face-to-Face) The UH registration system instruction mode for this course is listed in parenthesis. For this instruction mode, instructors and students are expected to normally be physically present in the classroom. If the course has a final examination, it will be in a classroom requiring your physical presence. Other assessment, such as a mid-term exam, may also be in a classroom. Whether this instructor will offer “remote presence” (starting a zoom meeting from the podium computer to enable student remote access on an occasional basis) for part or all of the semester is not known, but students should not rely on an expectation that remote presence will be available.
Prerequisites:
First Day Assignments:
Final Exam Schedule: 12/5/2024 6-9pm 311
This course will have:
Exam:
Paper:
Satisfies Senior Upper Level Writing Requirement: No
Experiential Course Type: No
Bar Course: No
DistanceEd ABA: No
Pass-Fail Student Election: Available
Course Materials
Book(s) Required
Course Materials: R. Percival, C. Schroeder, A. Miller, and J. Leape, Environmental Regulation: Law, Science, and Policy (10th edition 2024) ISBN: 9798889065975
NOTE EDITION CHANGE 7/31/2024
