CPR Scholars Call for 'Vigilant Advocacy' to Protect LGBTQ Gains

Maggie Dewane is the Digital Media Manager for CPR. She is a writer and communications specialist who has traveled to all seven continents to understand climate change, conservation, and how both are impacting people.

Maggie has written articles and provided lectures on climate change, and has been recognized by the National Press Club for her work. In 2017, she was featured in the Huffington Post’s climate series, “End of the Earth" and produced a short film on climate, "In Search of the Adelie Penguin."

Prior to joining CPR, Maggie managed communications for the international nonprofits Marine Stewardship Council and Environmental Investigation Agency. She has worked for the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the United States Senate. Maggie received her Master’s Degree in Environmental Science and Policy from Columbia University and holds a Bachelor of Science in Diplomacy and International Relations from Seton Hall University.

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Allison Stevens is the senior editor and research advisor at the Center for Progressive Reform. She joined the Center in November 2020 as a writing and editing consultant and has expanded her portfolio at the organization to include communications training, scholar outreach and coordination, and grant writing and fundraising.

Prior to joining the Center, Ms. Stevens served nonprofits as a communications consultant and worked in staff positions at the Frameworks Institute and PR Solutions. An accomplished and multi-award-winning journalist, she has also written and edited for Women's eNews, Congressional Quarterly, and The Hill.

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Laurie Ristino serves as the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative's Co-Executive Director and the Meridian Institute’s General Counsel and Senior Fellow.

Ristino is a policy and law expert on food security, the Farm Bill, climate change, ecosystem services, and land stewardship. Her work is concerned with developing new policy and civil society innovations to address climate change and social injustice while improving environmental and economic sustainability. She has published articles, op-eds, and blog posts proposing reforms to address soil, water, and air quality degradation, among other topics. Laurie has been quoted in top media outlets such as The Hill, Mother Jones, the Christian Science Monitor, E&E News, and Law360.

Laurie served as counsel for two decades at the USDA where she advised on natural resource and environmental matters. After a national search, she was appointed an associate law professor and the inaugural Director of the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law School. Following Vermont Law, Laurie was a visiting scholar at the George Washington University Law School. She currently teaches environmental policy and global food system sustainability at Johns Hopkins University, and she served as Interim Executive Director at CPR from September to December 2020.

Laurie earned her law degree with distinction from the University of Iowa, a Master in Public Administration from George Mason University, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan.

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Victor B. Flatt is the Dwight Olds Chair in Law and is the Faculty Co-Director of the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources (EENR) Center at the University of Houston Law Center. He also holds an appointment as a Distinguished Scholar of Carbon Markets at the University of Houston’s Gutierrez Energy Management Institute.

Professor Flatt is a recognized expert on environmental law, climate law, and energy law, and the intersection of these areas. Since 2019, he has created and taught the first law school courses in the country concerning how law relates to sustainability planning and ESG policies in corporations, offering the courses at UHLC, Vermont Law School, and the University of Utah Law School.

His research focuses on environmental legislation and enforcement, with particular expertise in the Clean Air Act, NEPA, and Climate. He is co-author of a popular environmental law casebook, and has authored more than 50 law review articles, which have appeared in journals such as the Notre Dame Law Review, Ecology Law Quarterly, The Ohio State Law Journal, Washington Law Review, Houston Law Review, and the Carolina Law Review. Seven of his articles have been recognized as finalists or winner of the best environmental law review article of the year, and one was recognized by Vanderbilt University Law School and the Environmental Law Institute as one of the three best environmental articles of 2010, leading to a seminar and panel on the article in a congressional staff briefing.

He has been a Visiting Law Professor at the University of Georgia Law School, the University of Washington Law School, and Seattle University School of Law. He has been honored as a Distinguished Environmental Scholar in Residence at Vermont Law School, Pace Law School (Elisabeth Haub Distinguished Scholar), and Widener University Delaware Law School. He was previously the inaugural O’Quinn Chair in Environmental Law at UHLC from 2002-2009. Before his return to UHLC in 2017, Professor Flatt was the inaugural Taft Distinguished Professor in Environmental Law and the Director of the Center for Climate, Energy, Environment, and Economics (CE3) at UNC Chapel Hill School of Law.

Professor Flatt has served on the AALS committees on Natural Resources and Environmental Law and was chair of the AALS Teaching Methods Section. He has served on many other board and committees in his career, including the national board of Lambda Legal and the Law School Admission Council’s Gay and Lesbian Interests section.

Professor Flatt received his B.A. in Chemistry and Math from Vanderbilt University where he was a Harold Stirling Vanderbilt Scholar, and his J.D. from Northwestern University, where he was a John Henry Wigmore Scholar. After graduating from Northwestern, Professor Flatt clerked for the Honorable Danny J. Boggs of the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Victor Flatt
University of Houston Law Center
4604 Calhoun Road
Houston, TX 77204-6060
713-743-2100
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Steph Tai is a Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Professor Tai's scholarly research examines the interactions between environmental and health sciences and administrative law. These include the consideration of scientific expertise and environmental justice concerns by administrative and judicial systems, as well as the role of scientific dialogues in food systems regulation, and the ways in which private governance incorporates scientific research.

Professor Tai was an adjunct law professor at Georgetown from 2002-2005 and a visiting professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law during the 2005-06 academic year. Professor Tai’s teaching interests include administrative law, environmental law, food systems law, environmental justice, risk regulation, contracts (especially private governance and supply chains!), and comparative Asian environmental law.

Raised in the South by two chemists, Professor Tai decided to combine their chemistry background with a legal education to improve the use of science in environmental protection. At Georgetown, Professor Tai was the Editor-in-Chief of the Georgetown International Environmental Law Review and was a member of the Georgetown Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Team.

After graduating from Georgetown, Professor Tai worked as the editor-in-chief of the International Review for Environmental Strategies, a publication by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Japan. Professor Tai has also served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Ronald Lee Gilman on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Professor Tai then worked as an appellate attorney in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, briefing and arguing cases involving a range of issues, from the protection of endangered cave species in Texas to the issuance of dredge and fill permits under the Clean Water Act. From 2013-2014, Professor Tai served as a U.S. Supreme Court Fellow as a researcher in the Federal Judicial Center.

Professor Tai actively represents amici in federal circuit court and Supreme Court cases. During the summer before joining the Wisconsin Law School faculty, Professor Tai teamed up with several other law professors to work on two Supreme Court amicus briefs: one for a group of legislators in Environmental Defense v. Duke Energy Corp., No. 05-0848, and another for a group of scientists in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 05-1120. Professor Tai still continues this work, representing commercial fishers in Entergy Corp. v. Environmental Protection Agency, Nos. 07-588, 07-589, 07-597; organic farmers in Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms, No. 09-475; former senior environmental agency officials in Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, Nos. 11-338, 11-347; and prominent climate scientists in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, D.C. Cir. Nos. 15-1363 et al. 

Professor Tai's leisure time is spent lifting weights, boxing, reading fiction, listening to terrible pop punk, scouring farmers' markets, and annoying a rescue iguana named Megyn Kelly.

Steph Tai
University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School
975 Bascom Mall, Room 8104
Madison, WI 53706
608.890.1236
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