Blog
Environmental Law 101: Global Climate Change, Part I
No environmental issue has sparked more controversy in the last decade than the issue of Climate Change or Global Warming. The heat of the debate is not matched by knowledge about the subject. As a result, I am going to write about the topic—in several pieces in order to emphasize that the topic has a number of moving parts that all deserve thoughtful discussion. I find it useful to start the conversation with the following...
Environmental Law 101: John Dean and Environmental Decision Making.
Time passes. One surmises, however, that, when John Dean graduated from law school in 1965, he never anticipated that he would work for a President of the United States, be charged with the obstruction of justice, become a book author and become a national speaker on ethics. No lawyer’s career, however, could better highlight the pitfalls of representing powerful clients and the tension between client loyalty on the one hand and a lawyer’s duty to...
Environmental Law 101: Fatal Mistakes — From the Challenger Disaster to British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon Catastrophe to Freedom Industry’s Elk River Mess.
Photograph by Paul Corbit Brown I have learned from 45 years of practicing environmental law that managers who otherwise excel in their jobs are not necessarily good at making decisions relating to how to deal with environmental crises--and with the press, the public and regulators. They, also, aren’t very good at avoiding crises in the first place—for a whole variety of reasons including complacency or having too much faith in technology....