The BP Catastrophe: When Hobbled Law and Hollow Regulation Leave Americans Unprotected

Alyson Flournoy is Professor of Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law in Gainesville.

Professor Flournoy has taught various environmental law courses including the environmental law survey course, Advanced Environmental Law and Litigation (a simulation-based skills course emphasizing the pre-trial phase), Comparative Environmental Law, and seminars on environmental law, as well as Administrative Law and Property. She also collaborated with colleagues from Environmental Engineering and Medicine to develop and teach an inter-disciplinary course on Environmental Ethics. In addition to teaching in the United States, she has taught environmental law at Warsaw University as part of the Introduction to American Law Program, and has taught comparative environmental law to classes that included students from France and Latin America in UF Summer Study Abroad Programs in France and Costa Rica. She has supervised LL.M. research on environmental law topics by Comparative Law graduate students from Taiwan, South Korea and Brazil. 

Since 1990, Professor Flournoy has served as a Trustee of Florida Defenders of the Environment (FDE), one of Florida's longest established and best respected conservation groups. She served on the Executive Council of the Board from 1993 to 1995 and as President of the Board of Trustees from 1995 to 1998. FDE was founded in 1969 by citizens who recognized the potentially devastating effects of the proposed Cross Florida Barge Canal. FDE forged a coalition of volunteer specialists from science, economics and law who led the successful effort to halt the project. FDE's work led to the creation of the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway on lands initially condemned for the Barge Canal. Since that time, FDE has continued its strategy of bringing reliable information to the attention of decision-makers and the public in its ongoing work to restore the Ocklawaha River and to protect Florida's other natural resources. Professor Flournoy also served on a University of Florida Sustainability Task Force charged by President Charles Young to make recommendations on how to make the University of Florida a leader in sustainability. She chaired the effort to create the Environmental and Land Use Law Program and has served as its Director since its inception in 1999.

Professor Flournoy began her legal career in 1983 as a law clerk to Chief Justice Robert Wilentz of the New Jersey Supreme Court. Following her clerkship, she practiced with the firm of Covington and Burling in Washington, D.C., specializing in environmental law. Her work included matters under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (Superfund), the Toxic Substances Control Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. She also spent six months through the firm's pro bono program working in a Neighborhood Legal Services Program office in Washington, where she handled a variety of housing, benefits and other cases on behalf of indigent clients.

Professor Flournoy's scholarship focuses on environmental ethics, decision-making processes under environmental and natural resource laws, and on the intersection of science and law. She has addressed these themes in writings about endangered species and forest management, wetlands conservation and restoration, and regulation of toxic substances. Her most recent work focuses on the importance of identifying the values that are embedded in the nation's environmental laws and policies.

Professor Flournoy is a member of the Executive Committee of the Environmental Law Section of the American Association of Law Schools. She also serves as an Advisor to the Natural Resources Leadership Institute, an organization founded to help rising leaders develop the skills to help build consensus on contentious environmental issues.

Alyson Flournoy
University of Florida
Levin College of Law
Gainesville, FL 
352.273.0945
email
website

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

William L. Andreen is the Edgar L. Clarkson Professor of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law.

During the Spring of 1991, he served as a Visiting Fellow in the Law Faculty at the Australian National University. In 2005, he served as a Visiting Professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law (spring), and as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Law at the Australian National University (fall). He also has an appointment as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the AustralianNationalUniversity (2006-2009). 

Professor Andreen has taught courses in Administrative Law, Environmental Law, Torts, International Environmental Law, and Public International Law.

While in academia, Professor Andreen has consulted on matters of international environmental law and policy for various governmental and non-governmental organizations, including the National Environment Management Council of Tanzania, the Swedish International Development Authority, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, the governments of Moldova and Trinidad and Tobago, and the ABA's Central and East European Law Initiative. He has been a faculty member in a Joint Legal Education Development Project at the Law Faculty, Mekelle University in Ethiopia. He has also taught Comparative Environmental Law at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and at the Australian National University, where he has also taught graduate courses in U.S. Administrative Law and U.S. Environmental Law. He served for two years as the co-chair of the Alabama Environmental Management Commission, Enforcement and Administrative Penalties Advisory Committee, and has been invited to participate in a range of colloquia, symposia, advisory committees, and study commissions on various environmental issues. He served as President of the Alabama Rivers Alliance from 1998 to 2001 and is currently Of Counsel, and served as Vice President of the Tuscaloosa Audubon Society from 1993 to 1995.

Professor Andreen served as Assistant Regional Counsel for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region IV, from 1979 to 1983, where he was the attorney with primary responsibility for defending litigation brought against the Agency in the region. Before joining the EPA staff, he was an Associate at Haas, Holland, Lipshutz, Levison & Gibert, in Atlanta, Georgia, where he dealt with a variety of state and federal litigation in the areas of employment, constitutional law, environmental law, commercial law, corporate law, torts, and property.

Professor Andreen has published numerous chapters and articles on topics including water pollution control, environmental law in the developing world, water law, environmental impact assessment, hazardous waste liability, environmental enforcement, federalism in environmental law, administrative rulemaking, and ocean incineration of hazardous waste. He has published in Australia, Tanzania, as well as in the United States, where his articles have appeared in such reviews as the Stanford Environmental Law Journal, the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, the Indiana Law Journal, the George Washington Law Review, the Alabama Law Review, the North Carolina Law Review, the Pace Environmental Law Review, and the Environmental Law Reporter. On four occasions, his articles have either been reprinted or selected as a finalist for publication in the Land Use and Environment Law Review (which reprints the articles selected as the best land use and environmental law articles of the preceding year). He  contributed a chapter entitled “Delegated Federalism versus Devolution: Some Insights from the History of Water Pollution Control” which appears in the Cambridge University Press book, Preemptive Choice: The Theory, Law and Reality of Federalism’s Core Question. He was editor of the 1990 edition of Environmental Law and Regulation In Alabama, published by Bradley Arant Rose & White and is the editor of the forthcoming Alabama Water Law Handbook (Alabama Law Institute).

Professor Andreen is the former Chair of the Environmental Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools; a member of the Commission on Environmental Law of the World Conservation Union (IUCN); and is the founder and Director of the University of Alabama School of Law/Australian National University Law Faculty's Reciprocal Summer School Program.

He is a graduate of the College of Wooster and Columbia University School of Law.

William Andreen
The University of Alabama School of Law
Tuscaloosa, AL
205.348.7091
email
website

Thomas O. McGarity holds the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair in Administrative Law at the University of Texas in Austin. He is a member of the board of directors of the Center for Progressive Reform, and a past president of the organization.

Professor McGarity has taught and written in the areas of Administrative Law, Environmental Law, Occupational Safety and Health Law, Food Safety Law, Science and the Law, and Torts for twenty-five years.

While in academia, McGarity has served as a consultant and/or advisor to the Administrative Conference of the United States, the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress (OTA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Texas Department of Agriculture, and the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. With Professor Sidney A. Shapiro, Professor McGarity designed and helped initiate a rulemaking prioritization process for OSHA rulemaking during the early 1990s. As a consultant to OTA, Professor McGarity helped write the "Regulatory Tools" report that agencies have frequently cited in designing regulatory programs. As a consultant to the Texas Department of Agriculture, McGarity was a primary draftsperson of that agency's first farmworker protection regulations in the late 1980s. During the mid-1990s, he was also actively involved in the drafting of and negotiations surrounding the federal Food Quality Protection Act.

Professor McGarity began his legal career in the Office of General Counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency. In the private sector, Professor McGarity has served as counsel or consultant in various legal and administrative proceedings to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Public Citizen, the Sierra Club, the American Lung Association, the National Audubon Society, Texas Rural Legal Aid, California Rural Legal Aid, and many local organizations, including, for example, The Bear Creek Citizens for the Best Environment Ever. McGarity has also served on many advisory committees for such entities as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of Technology Assessment, and the National Academy of Sciences.

Professor McGarity has published widely in the areas of regulatory law and policy. His book Reinventing Rationality analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of cost-benefit analysis in regulatory decision-making and describes the use of such regulatory impact assessments by federal agencies and the Office of Management and Budget during the Reagan Administration. Workers at Risk, co-authored with Sidney A. Shapiro, describes rulemaking, implementation and enforcement in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from its inception in 1970 through 1990. The book then analyzes OSHA's strengths and weaknesses and makes many recommendations for improving standard-setting and enforcement. McGarity's casebook, The Law of Environmental Protection, co-authored with John Bonine, has been used in introductory Environmental Law courses at law schools throughout the country. His relatively recent books include The Preemption War: When Federal Bureaucracies Trump Local Juries, Yale University Press 2008, and Bending Science: How Special Interest Corrupt Public Health Research, Harvard University Press 2008, co-authored with fellow CPR Member Scholar Wendy Wagner.

Professor McGarity has published dozens of articles on environmental law, administrative law, and toxic torts in prominent law reviews, such as the Harvard Law Review, Chicago Law Review, Pennsylvania Law Review and Law & Contemporary Problems, as well as in specialty journals, such as the Administrative Law Review, the Harvard Environmental Law Review, Risk, and the Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy, and consumer magazines like the American Prospect and the Hastings Center Report. McGarity has written on federal regulation of biotechnology since the advent of the commercialization of recombinant DNA techniques, and his article in the Duke Law Journal on the "ossification" of the federal rulemaking process, which elaborates on the dangers of encumbering the process of promulgating health and environmental rules with burdensome analytical requirements and review procedures, is frequently cited in the recurrent "regulatory reform" debates.

Professor McGarity has been an active participant in efforts to improve health, safety and environmental quality in the United States. He has testified before many congressional committees on environmental, administrative law, preemption of state tort laws in cases involving medical devices, and occupational safety and health issues. During the first session of the 104th Congress (the "Gingrich" Congress), Professor McGarity was frequently the lone representative of the view that federal regulation had an important role to play in protecting public health and the environment on panels testifying before House and Senate Committee considering "regulatory reform" legislation. Professor McGarity has also participated in path-breaking legal challenges to government inaction like Environmental Defense Fund v. Blum (a challenge to EPA's decision to allow further use of the carcinogenic pesticide mirex through emergency use exemptions) and Les v. Reilly (a challenge to EPA's failure to establish protective tolerances for eight carcinogenic pesticides). As a result of the latter litigation, the pesticide industry was forced to accept the greater protections afforded children in the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996. 

Thomas McGarity
The University of Texas School of Law
Austin, TX
512.232.1384
email
website

James Goodwin, J.D., M.P.P., is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Center for Progressive Reform. He joined CPR in May of 2008. Prior to joining CPR, Mr. Goodwin worked as a legal intern for the Environmental Law Institute and EcoLogix Group, Inc. He is a published author with articles on human rights and environmental law and policy appearing in the Michigan Journal of Public Affairs and the New England Law Review (co-author with Armin Rosencranz).

Mr. Goodwin graduated magna cum laude from Kalamazoo College, where he received a B.A. with honors in Political Science. He received his law degree (with a certificate in environmental law) from the University of Maryland School of Law, where he graduated magna cum laude, and his master’s degree in public policy (concentration in environmental policy) from the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, where he graduated as class valedictorian. While at the University of Maryland School of Law, Mr. Goodwin was a member of the Moot Court team. He is a member of Order of the Coif and Phi Beta Kappa. 

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202.747.0698 ext. 5
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