Beware Dangers of Roof Crush Rule

Nina Mendelson serves as the Joseph L. Sax Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.

Area of Professor Mendelson teaches environmental and administrative law, as well as legislation and statutory interpretation. Her scholarship focuses on administrative process, especially in the environmental regulatory setting.

Prior to teaching, Professor Mendelson served for several years as an attorney in the Department of Justice Environment & Natural Resources Division, litigating and negotiating environmental legislative issues. Professor Mendelson also practiced environmental law with a private firm in Seattle, where she did extensive pro bono litigation, including on behalf of community and environmental groups. She was a law clerk to Judges Pierre Leval and John Walker, Jr., now both of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Her recent publications include: “Six Simple Steps to Increase Contractor Accountability,” in Government by Contract: Outsourcing and American Democracy, Harvard University Press, 2009; “Preemption and Theories of Federalism,” in Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law, and Reality of Federalism’s Core Question, with Robert R.M. Verchick; Quick Off the Mark? In Favor of Empowering the President- Elect, 103 Nw. U. L. Rev. Colloquy 464 (2009); A Presumption Against Agency Preemption, 102 Nw. U. L. Rev 695 (2008); among many others.

Professor Mendelson graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and received her JD from the Yale Law School, where she was articles editor of the Law Journal. 

Nina Mendelson
University of Michigan Law School
Ann Arbor, MI
734.936.5071
email
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William Funk is a Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.

Professor Funk regularly teaches administrative law and constitutional law. He has also taught environmental law, toxic tort law, pollution control law, and a seminar on hazardous waste law. As part of government sponsored training programs, he has taught environmental law to federal judges and to employees of the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

Professor Funk left the practice of law for academia in 1983, but has remained actively involved in the everyday world of environmental law and regulatory practice. Over the years, he has consulted for the U.S. Department of Energy, the Administrative Conference of the United States, and the Columbia River Gorge Commission, as well as for attorneys on particular cases. He chaired an advisory committee for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) that developed Oregon's Green Permit regulations and served for a number of years on an advisory committee for the Oregon DEQ drafting regulations governing hazardous waste cleanups. Professor Funk has been active in the American Bar Association's Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice, where he is a past Chair of the Section, as well as chairing committees and editing its newsletter.

After receiving his B.A. from Harvard and his J.D. from Columbia, Professor Funk clerked for Judge James Oakes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He then joined the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. After three years in that position, he became the Principal Staff Member of the Legislation Subcommittee of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In 1978 he joined the U.S. Department of Energy, first as a Deputy Assistant General Counsel and later as Assistant General Counsel. At the Department of Energy his principal responsibilities first involved the then-petroleum price and allocation system and later energy efficiency regulations and regulatory reform.

Professor Funk has published widely in the fields of administrative law, constitutional law, and environmental law. He is the author of Introduction to American Constitutional Law and a co-author of Administrative Procedure and Practice, Legal Protection of the Environment, and Federal Administrative Procedure Sourcebook.  

As a law student, Professor Funk was one of the founding editors of the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law. As a law professor, he has chaired both the Natural Resources Section and the Administrative Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools. He has been a frequent speaker on environmental subjects in CLE programs. He was recently elected to the American Law Institute. 

William Funk
Lewis & Clark Law School
Portland, Oregon
503.768.6606
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website

SSRN

Sidney A. Shapiro holds the Fletcher Chair in Administrative Law at the Wake Forest University School of Law and is the Associate Dean for Research and Development. He is a member of the board of directors of the Center for Progressive Reform.

Professor Shapiro has taught and written in the areas of Administrative Law, Regulatory Law and Policy, Environmental Policy, and Occupational Safety and Health Law for 25 years.

While in academia, Shapiro has served as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress (OTA), and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). With Professor Thomas O. McGarity, Professor Shapiro designed and helped initiate a rulemaking prioritization process for OSHA rulemaking during the early 1990s. As a consultant to OTA, Professor Shapiro assessed various regulatory tools or options that agencies can use to implement regulation. As a consultant to ACUS, Professor Shapiro studied the efficacy of the regulatory process at EPA (noise control), OSHA, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Professor Shapiro began his legal career as a trial attorney in the Bureau of Competition of the Federal Trade Commission and later worked as the Deputy Legal Counsel, Secretary's Review Panel on New Drug Regulation at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

Professor Shapiro has published widely in the areas of regulatory law and policy. He co-authored The People’s Agents and the Battle to Protect the American Public: Special Interests, Government, and Threats to Health, Safety, and the Environment, with CPR President, Rena Steinzor. This book reviewed years of government actions and inactions leading to the decline of the five protector agencies. His book, Risk Regulation at Risk: Restoring a Pragmatic Approach, analyzes health and safety and environmental protection laws and policy, and argues for a pragmatic approach to policy in these areas instead of using economic analysis to set regulatory goals. Workers at Risk, co-authored with Thomas O. McGarity, describes rulemaking, implementation and enforcement in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from its inception in 1970 through 1990. The book analyzes OSHA's strengths and weaknesses and makes many recommendations for improving standard-setting and enforcement. Shapiro's casebook, Administrative Law and Procedure: A Problem Approach, co-authored with William Funk and Russell Weaver, is used in administrative law courses at law schools throughout the country. His casebook, Regulatory Policy and Law, is the first of its kind, and is used to train lawyers to evaluate and advocate for public policy.

Professor Shapiro has published dozens of articles on regulatory policy, health and safety laws, environmental law and administrative law in prominent law reviews, such as the Harvard Law Review, Duke Law Journal and the Wake Forest Law Review, as well as in specialty journals, such as the Administrative Law Review and the Ecology Law Quarterly.

Professor Shapiro has been an active participant in efforts to improve health, safety and environmental quality in the United States. He has testified before congressional committees on administrative law and occupational safety and health issues. He has worked with various public interest groups in advisory and support capacities, including Public Citizen Global Trade Watch, Public Citizen Congress Watch, and OMB Watch. 

Sidney Shapiro
Wake Forest University School of Law
Winston-Salem, NC
336.758.7320
email
website