New Yorkers' Environmental Rights Are Under Attack

Rebecca M. Bratspies is Professor of Law at the CUNY School of Law in New York City.

Professor Bratspies has taught Environmental Law, Natural Resources Law, International Environmental Law, Property, Administrative Law, and Lawyering. She holds a J.D. cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a B.A. in Biology from Wesleyan University. She has fused these skills into concerns about the environment, with a particular emphasis in genetically-modified crops, about which she has frequently written and presented.

Before teaching, Professor Bratspies served as a legal advisor to Taiwan's Environmental Protection Administration, interpreting international treaties, representing TEPA in settlement negotiations, advising on American laws and practices, presenting seminars on United States constitutional jurisprudence. She also served as a special adjunct attorney in Taiwan's Ministry of Justice. After returning from Taiwan, Bratspies practiced environmental, commercial, and class action litigation with a private firm. Major pro bono experience included two successful class action suits challenging Pennsylvania's implementation of welfare reform.

Professor Bratspies began her legal career as a law clerk to Judge C. Arlen Beam, United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. She returned to academia in 1998 at New York University School of Law and then to the University of Idaho College of Law in 2001. During the 2003-2004 academic year, she served as Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Michigan State University-DCL, East Lansing, Michigan.

Professor Bratspies has recently published two books: Progress in International Institutions (with Russell Miller) (Martinus Nijoff: 2007), and Transboundary Harm in International Law: Lessons from the Trail Smelter Arbitration (with Russell Miller) (Cambridge University Press: 2006). Additionally, Bratspies has written in the areas of the human right to a healthy environment, sustainable fisheries management, regulation of genetically modified crops and the role of trust in regulatory systems. 

Rebecca Bratspies
CUNY School of Law
Flushing, NY
718.340.4505
email
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Katrina Fischer Kuh joined the Elisabeth Haub School of Law faculty as the Haub Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law in 2017. She was previously on the faculty at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, where she was a Professor of Law and served as an Associate Dean of Intellectual Life. Professor Kuh’s scholarship focuses on climate change and sustainability and she has taught Environmental Law, International Environmental Law, Global Climate Change and U.S. Law, Administrative Law, and Torts. She is the co-editor of The Law of Adaptation to Climate Change: United States and International Aspects.

Before entering academia, Professor Kuh worked in the environmental and litigation practice groups in the New York office of Arnold & Porter LLP and served as an advisor on natural resource policy in the United States Senate. She received her undergraduate and law degrees from Yale and served as a law clerk to Judge Charles S. Haight of the District Court for the Southern District of New York and Judge Diana Gribbon Motz of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.