Regulatory Blowout: How Regulatory Failures Made the BP Disaster Possible, and How the System Can Be Fixed to Avoid a Recurrence

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

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

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
website

Former CPR Member Scholar Holly Doremus is James H. House and Hiram H. Hurd Professor of Environmental Regulation; Faculty Co-Director, Center for Law, Energy & the Environment; and Director, Environmental Law Program at the University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Doremus has taught a variety of classes in the areas of environmental law, natural resources law, land use, and property. In addition to her law school teaching, she has taught at the Bren School of Environmental Management at UC Santa Barbara, in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley, and in the Graduate Group in Ecology at UC Davis. Her writing has largely concentrated on the protection of nature, biodiversity, and endangered species; conflicts between biodiversity protection and water use in the arid west; the role of science in environmental law; management of public lands and public resources; and the relationship between private property rights and environmental regulation.

While in academia, Professor Doremus has been a consultant to the CalFed Bay Delta Program, a novel intergovernmental effort to protect the ecological resources of the San Francisco Bay-Delta system while minimizing disruptions to the local farming communities and municipal water users. She has been a member of two National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council advisory committees, one on the use of adaptive management by the Army Corps of Engineers and the other on the protection of endangered species in the PlatteRiver basin. She has also been a part of multi-disciplinary research initiatives examining the FERC licensing process, the future of the S.F. Bay-Sacramento Delta, and ocean governance in California.

Professor Doremus began her legal career as a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She then practiced law at a small firm in Corvallis, Oregon. A substantial part of her practice was devoted to land use law. While in practice, she did pro bono environmental law work for local citizen groups and the National Wildlife Federation. Since joining the faculty at U.C. Davis she has not been in active practice, but has done consulting work for the National Audubon Society's California chapter.

Professor Doremus has published widely in the areas of environmental and natural resource law. Her latest book is Water War in the Klamath Basin: Macho Law, Combat Biology, and Dirty Politics (Island Press 2008), co-authored with CPR Scholar Dan Tarlock.

Before moving into law, Professor Doremus was trained as a biologist. She holds a Ph.D. in Plant Physiology from Cornell University, where she was a National Science Foundation graduate fellow. After earning her PhD, she worked as a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Her research focused on plant metabolism, with particular attention to the pathways by which the building blocks of DNA are produced.

Holly Doremus
University of California, Berkeley

510.643.5699

email
website

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
email
website
SSRN

Robert L. Glicksman is the J. B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law at the George Washington University Law School. He is a member of the board of directors of the Center for Progressive Reform.

Professor Glicksman has expertise in both of the two main branches of environmental law, pollution control and public natural resources law. His recent research has focused largely on climate change issues, public natural resources issues, and the intersection of the two. He has taught three different environmental law courses -- a survey course covering both of these branches and more specialized courses in regulation of air and water pollution and toxic substances and hazardous waste regulation. He also regularly teaches property law (including regulatory takings cases involving environmental controls) and administrative law. Professor Glicksman has written on all of these topics for more than 25 years.

Professor Glicksman worked in private practice for four years after graduating from the Cornell Law School. He practiced for Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, a nationally recognized law firm with an office in Washington, D.C., serving industrial clients in the energy and chemical industries. Professor Glicksman returned to private practice in 1993-94 while on leave from the University of Kansas. During that time, he worked for Lowenstein Sandler, a firm in Roseland, N.J. with a thriving environmental law practice, providing advice to clients on hazardous waste-related issues.

In addition to his experiences in private practice, Professor Glicksman served as a consultant to the Secretariat for the Commission for Environmental Cooperation. The CEC is an international organization established by the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (the environmental side agreement to NAFTA) on issues pertaining to the resolution of international disputes among Canada, Mexico, and the United States on issues of both domestic and international environmental law. Professor Glicksman's role was to provide advice concerning the proper disposition of submissions by NGOs seeking a finding by the CEC that the signatory parties have failed to effectively enforce their environmental laws.

Professor Glicksman has published widely in the areas of pollution control, public natural resources management, and administrative law. His book Risk Regulation At Risk: Restoring a Pragmatic Balance (Stanford University Press 2003, with Sidney Shapiro), takes issue with the notion that economic efficiency should be the sole or even principal criterion governing the establishment and implementation of laws and regulations designed to reduce the health and environmental risks attributable to industrial activities. The authors urge instead a pragmatic approach to risk regulation that takes into account other values. Professor Glicksman is the lead co-author of an environmental law casebook, Environmental Protection: Law and Policy (Aspen Law and Business), now in its fifth edition (with Professors Markell, Buzbee, Mandelker, and Tarlock). Professor Glicksman is also the co-author (with George C. Coggins) of the leading treatise on public land and resource management, Public Natural Resources Law, (now in its second edition), as well as a student nutshell on the same subject, Modern Public Land Law (now in its third edition). He has also contributed a chapter entitled, “Federal Preemption by Inaction,” in Preemptive Choice: The Theory, Law, and Reality of Federalism’s Core Question, 2009, edited by fellow CPR Member Scholar William Buzbee, and “Environmental Law,” in Kansas Annual Survey, 2007.

Professor Glicksman's law review articles have been published in journals that include the Pennsylvania Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Vanderbilt Law Review, the Wake Forest Law Review, the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, the Stanford Environmental Law Journal, the UCLA Journal of Environmental Law and Policy, the Virginia Environmental Law Journal, the Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, the William & Mary Environmental Law & Policy Review, the Oregon Law Review, the Loyola Law Review, The Administrative Law Review, the Chicago-Kent Law Review, and the Denver University Law Review. Two of Professor Glicksman's articles on judicial review of environmental decision-making (co-authored with Christopher Schroeder, a CPR Board member), have been singled out for recognition as the best in the field for a particular year and have been republished in the Land Use & Environment Law Review. A third article by Professor Glicksman on regulatory takings was also republished in that review. Another of Professor Glicksman's articles, on the Supreme Court and its treatment of environmental law issues, was designated in 1994 by Professor William Rodgers of the University of Washington as one of the 25 best environmental law articles ever written.

Professor Glicksman was instrumental in the expansion of the environmental law curriculum at the University of Kansas School of Law. He helped to establish a certificate program in environmental and natural resources law. He is now the J.B. & Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law at the George Washington University Law School.

Robert Glicksman
The George Washington University Law School
2000 H Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20052
202.994.4641

email
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Joel A. Mintz is a Professor Emeritus of Law and C. William Trout Senior Fellow in Public Interest Law at Nova Southeastern University Law Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

For more than 30 years, Professor Mintz has taught a variety of substantive and clinical environmental law courses, including offerings on the federal law of pollution control, comparative environmental law, environmental aspects of land use planning, and other subjects. He has written extensively on environmental enforcement, the Superfund program, growth management, sustainable development, and certain international environmental agreements.

Professor Mintz co-founded Nova Southeastern Law Center's in-house Environmental and Land Use Law Clinic, which provides representation to environmental citizens groups and neighborhood organizations in matters that concern implementation of the Florida Growth Management Act and protection of the Everglades and the Florida Keys. He has testified as a legal expert witness in judicial and administrative proceedings, and has given numerous presentations on environmental topics at gatherings of professional and trade associations and on radio and television public affairs broadcasts.

Professor Mintz serves on the board of directors of the Everglades Law Center, Inc., a not-for-profit environmental public interest law firm based in South Florida. He chairs that firm's Litigation Screening Committee.

Mintz is an elected member of the Environmental Law Commission of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and of the International Council on Environmental Law, and he is a member of the Environmental Law Institute, the American Society of Writers on Legal Subjects, and other professional, environmental, bar and civic organizations. He is a member of the executive committee of the Section on State and Local Government Law of the Association of American Law Schools, whose Section newsletter he has edited annually since 1991. He has also served on the Committee on Source Removal of Contaminants in the Subsurface of the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council.

In the early and mid-1970's, on a pro-bono basis, Professor Mintz lobbied successfully for the passage of the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. In recognition of those voluntary efforts, President Carter invited him to attend the White House ceremony at which that statute was formally signed into law.

Prior to becoming a professor at Nova Southeastern, Professor Mintz worked for six years as an enforcement attorney and supervisory attorney with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Chicago and Washington, D.C. He handled or supervised numerous complex cases involving air, water, and hazardous waste/groundwater pollution from such varied industries as iron and steel, electric utilities, petroleum, pulp and paper, portland cement, and rubber manufacturing. Mintz was the lead attorney on the first EPA criminal contempt case brought in a U.S. District Court to redress a knowing violation of a signed Consent Decree; and he served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Wisconsin with respect to a precedent-setting Grand Jury investigation into criminal violations of the Clean Water Act. In recognition of his EPA enforcement work, he received EPA's Special Service Award as well as its Bronze Medal for Commendable Service.

Professor Mintz also worked (more briefly) as a law clerk with both the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Public Education Association, and as an editor for West Publishing Company (now West Group, Inc.) in New York.

Professor Mintz has published extensively in the fields of environmental law and state and local taxation and finance. He authored a critically acclaimed history of EPA's enforcement programs, Enforcement at the EPA: High Stakes and Hard Choices (University of Texas Press, 1995), and a well received treatise on the potential liabilities of subnational governments under federal environmental laws, State and Local Government Environmental Liability (West Group, Inc., 1994), which he has updated on an annual basis.Mintz also co-authored an introductory casebook on environmental law (published in 2000 by Lexis-Nexis, Inc.), Environmental Enforcement: Cases and Materials, (with CPR Member Scholar Clifford Rechtschaffen and Robert Kuehn, Carolina Academic Press, 2007), and State and Local Taxation and Finance in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition (with Gelfand and Salsich, West Group, Inc., 2007).

In addition, Professor Mintz has written several book chapters and contributions, and he is the author of numerous law review articles that have appeared in journals published at Harvard, Yale, Virginia, Georgetown, Columbia and other well known law schools. His journal articles have repeatedly been considered to be among the 30 best articles of the year in the environmental law field by peer reviewers.

Professor Mintz has consulted, on an informal basis, with officials of the EPA with regard to environmental issues and policy matters. He has peer reviewed the written work of other academics in several disciplines. His name appears on a list, compiled by the U.S. Department of State, of potential speakers at U.S. embassies and consulates with respect to environmental issues.

Joel Mintz
Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center
Ft. Lauderdale, FL
954.262.6160
email
website

Daniel Rohlf is a Professor of Law and Of Counsel, Earthrise Law Center at the Lewis & Clark Law School.

Professor Rohlf’s areas of expertise are biodiversity conservation and management; public lands management; and the intersection of law and science in environmental law.

Professor Rohlf has over 20 years of experience as a litigator, (with the past 11 years as Director of Pacific Environmental Advocacy Center at Lewis and Clark's domestic environmental law clinic), primarily in cases involving the federal Endangered Species Act.

Before entering academia, Professor Rohlf served as a Law Clerk for Justice Jay A. Rabinowitz, Alaska Supreme Court, and The Peregrine Fund to help reintroduce juvenile Peregrine Falcons into the Yellowstone ecosystem. When Professor Rohlf worked with the Center for Conservation Biology, he traveled to east Africa to consult with Ugandan officials and conduct research on Uganda's regulation of its biological resources. While working as a Legal Intern/Law Clerk at the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, Professor Rohlf coordinated a long term project involving conservation of grizzly bears in the Lower 48 states. At the U.S. Geological Survey, Bureau of Exploration Geochemistry, Mr. Rohlf worked as a Geologic Field Assistant and Physical Science Technician.

Among others, Professor Rohlf authored the opinion for the Court in a major Clean Water Act case, Miners' Advocacy Council v. State of Alaska, 778 P.2d 1126 (AK 1989). Professor Rohlf wrote The Endangered Species Act of 1973: a Guide to Its Protections and Implementation (Stanford Environmental Law Society, 1989), which was the Winner of 1989 National Wildlife Federation Publication Award.

Professor Rohlf has written widely in the area of the conservation and biodiversity. Some of his more recent publications include, Avoiding the ‘Bare Record’: Safeguarding Meaningful Judicial Review of Federal Agency Actions, 35 Ohio N.U. L. Rev. 575 (2009); Conserving Endangered Species in an Era of Global Warming, 38 Environmental Law Reporter 10203 (2008) (co-authored with John Kostyack), reprinted in SR021 ALI-ABA 147 (2009), Can Federal Courts Save the Environment?, Forest Magazine (Winter 2007), Lessons from the Columbia River Basin: Follow the Blueprint but Avoid the Barriers, 19 Global Business Development Law Journal 195 (2006); and Key International and U.S. Laws Governing Management and Conservation of Biodiversity, Contributed essay in Principles of Conservation Biology, Third Edition (2006).

Daniel John Rohlf
School of Law of Lewis & Clark College
Portland, OR
503.768.6707
email
website

Amy Sinden is a Professor of Law at the Temple University Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and at the Temple-Tsinghua Masters of Law program in Beijing, China.

Professor Sinden has taught, lectured, and written in the areas of environmental law, natural resources law, regulatory design, and cost-benefit analysis, human rights, and climate change.

Before joining the Temple Law School faculty in 2001, Professor Sinden served as senior counsel for Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, handling litigation on behalf of PennFuture and other citizens' and environmental groups. Prior to this position, she was an associate attorney for Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund (formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) in Seattle, Washington, where she represented a range of environmental, fishing, and other groups in litigation focusing on endangered species, clean water, and water conservation issues. In addition to her involvement with environmental issues, Professor Sinden was an attorney at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, where she represented parents in civil child abuse and neglect proceedings, and advocated on behalf of welfare recipients seeking job training and education. Professor Sinden served twice as a law clerk, first for Judge John F. Gerry of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, and later for Judge Dolores K. Sloviter of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Professor Sinden graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1991.

Professor Sinden's recent academic writings have criticized the misuse of economic theory in environmental law, arguing against the use of cost-benefit analysis in environmental standard setting and countering claims that private property rights can solve environmental problems in the absence of government regulation. She has also written about the application of classical human rights norms to environmental conflicts. Recent publications include Formality and Informality in Cost-Benefit Analysis, 2015 Utah L. Rev. 93, The Missing Instrument: Dirty Input Limits, 33 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 65 (2009), with fellow CPR Member Scholar David Driesen, Cost-Benefit Analysis: New Foundationas on Shifting Sand, 3 Reg. & Governance 48 (2009), with Douglas Kysar and David Driesen, The Tragedy of the Commons and the Myth of a Private Property Solution, 78 U. COLO. L. REV. 533 (2007).

Amy Sinden
Temple University Beasley School of Law
Philadelphia, PA
215.204.4969
email
website

Rena Steinzor is the Edward M. Robertson Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, and a past president of the Center for Progressive Reform. She is the author of Why Not Jail? Industrial Catastrophes, Corporate Malfeasance, and Government Inaction.

Professor Steinzor has taught an environmental law survey course, seminars in risk assessments and critical issues in environmental law and science, administrative law, contracts, torts and counseling and negotiation. She has written in the areas of (1) regulatory dysfunction in agencies assigned to protect public health, worker and consumer safety, and the environment; (2) the role of centralized White House review on the protectiveness of regulation; (3) environmental federalism, including so-called "unfunded mandates" imposed on state and local governments by the federal government and the impact on public health of devolving authority and responsibility for solving environmental problems; (4) the implications of industry self-regulation on the protection of the environment and human health; (5) "market-based" alternatives to traditional regulation; and (6) political interference with regulatory science.

She is the editor, with Christopher Schroeder, of the CPR-sponsored book A New Progressive Agenda for Public Health and the Environment, published by Carolina Academic Press. She is also the editor, with Wendy Wagner, of the book Rescuing Science from Politics, published by Cambridge University Press in 2006. Her book, Mother Earth and Uncle Sam: How Pollution and Hollow Government Hurt Our Kids was published by the University of Texas Press in December 2007. With Professor Sidney Shapiro of Wake Forest Law School, she 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 published by the University of Chicago Press in 2010.

Professor Steinzor began her legal career in 1976, and entered academia in January 1994. From 1987 through 1993, she was associated - first as "of counsel" and ultimately as the partner in charge of the environmental practice - at Spiegel & McDiarmid, a 45-lawyer, Washington, D.C. firm representing approximately 400 cities, counties, states, and public agencies in the energy, environmental, communications, and transportation fields. The practice counseled federal, state, and municipal clients regarding compliance with federal and state laws and regulations.

Prior to joining Spiegel & McDiarmid, Professor Steinzor served as Staff Counsel, Subcommittee on Commerce, Transportation, and Tourism of the Energy and Commerce Committee, U.S. House of Representatives (James J. Florio, Chairman). She was the primary staff person responsible for legislation that became the "Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986" (Public Law 99-499) and the "Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act" (Public Law 99-519). She also prepared legislation to reauthorize the Toxic Substances Control Act during the 98th Congress.

Professor Steinzor has testified before Congress on several occasions, most recently regarding the impact of health, safety, and environmental regulations on the economy.

Rena Steinzor
University of Maryland Carey School of Law
Baltimore, MD
410.706 0564
email
website

Joseph P. Tomain is Dean Emeritus and the Wilbert & Helen Ziegler Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.

Dean Tomain's research and teaching interests have focused on Energy Law, Land Use, Government Regulation, and Contracts. Dean Tomain received his J.D. from George Washington University National Law Center and his A.B. from the University of Notre Dame.

Most of Dean Tomain's working experience has been in the academy. He has had regulatory experience in practice and stays involved in energy and environmental matters as a member of the advisory board of the Institute of Environmental Studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Additionally, his work in the field of energy comes through publications, the occasional commentary, and news editorials. He is also a member of the Multidisciplinary Council of Tennessee, which is examining issues surrounding science in the courtroom.

After completing law school, Dean Tomain worked in the private sector for a New Jersey law firm handling general litigation matters. He began his law teaching career in 1976 at Drake University Law School and joined the University of Cincinnati in 1983. In 1986-87 he served as Visiting Professor at the University of Texas School of Law. He has either planned programs or presented papers for the Association of American Law Schools; American Bar Association; American Judicature Society; American Legal Studies Association; American Planning Association; Canadian Institute on Resources Law; Cincinnati Bar Association; Conference of Chief Justices; Federal Bar Association; Hofstra University School of Law; Iowa Planning Association; North American Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution; Ohio CLE Institute; Ohio Planning Association; Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Institute; University of Cincinnati (various colleges); University of Kansas School of Law; United States Sixth Circuit Conference; and, continuing legal education programs and bar review courses. Dean Tomain was elected a Visiting Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, is the recipient of an NEH summer fellowship award, and served as a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Law in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Dean Tomain's publications include books entitled Creon’s Ghost: Law, Justice, and the Humanities, Energy Law and Policy for the 21st Century, Regulatory Law & Policy, Energy Law and Policy, Nuclear Power Transformation, Energy Law in a Nutshell, and Energy Decision Making. He has also written numerous articles and delivered papers on the subjects of energy law and government regulation.

In addition to his administrative duties, teaching, and scholarship, Dean Tomain serves on a number of professional and civic organizations. Since 2000 he has served as Vice Chair of the Year in Review Committee of the American Bar Association Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources Committee on Energy Industry Restructuring, Finance, Mergers, and Acquisitions. He is Chair of the Board of the KnowledgeWorks Foundation. He serves on the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Judicial Independence Commission on State Judicial Selection Standards. He is also a member of the Board of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, a delegate to the Ohio State Bar Association, a member of the Board of the Ohio State Bar Foundation, a member of the Board of the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation, and has been elected a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

Joseph Tomain
University of Cincinnati College of Law
Cincinnati, OH
513.556.0067
email
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Sandra Zellmer is a Professor of Law and Director of Natural Resources Clinics at the Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana.

Zellmer teaches in the Natural Resources and Environmental Law Clinic and related courses. Prior to joining the faculty of at the University of Montana, she was a Professor of Law at the University of Nebraska, where she taught torts, natural resources, water law, environmental law, and related courses.

She has published numerous articles and commentary on natural resources law, water conservation and use, and related topics, as well as several books, including Comparative Environmental Law and Natural Resources (Carolina 2013) and Natural Resources Law (West 3rd ed. 2012) (with Professors Laitos and Wood).

Zellmer was appointed as a member of the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council Committee on Missouri River Recovery and Associated Sediment Management Issues (2008-2010). In addition to being a Member Scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform, she is also a Senior Specialist (Roster Candidate) with the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, a Member of the Resilience Alliance (an international multi-disciplinary research group that explores the dynamics of adaptive, complex systems), and a trustee of the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation. Between 2002-2004, Professor Zellmer served as the Chair of the Committee on Marine Resources for the American Bar Association Section on Environment, Energy and Resources, and as an advisor to the Council of Great Lakes Governors Water Working Group Task Force on Tribal/First Nation Treaties in the cotext of a proposed Great Lakes Water Compact, which was adopted in 2008.

Zellmer was a faculty member at the University of Toledo College of Law from 1998-2003, and has also been a visiting professor at Tulane, Drake, Lewis and Clark, and the University of Auckland law schools. Before she began teaching, Zellmer was a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division, litigating public lands, wildlife and NEPA issues for the National Park Service, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal agencies. She also practiced law at Faegre & Benson in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and clerked for the Honorable William W. Justice, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas. Her publications cover a range of topics, including preemption, water and public lands management, wildlife and adaptive management, and have been published in journals such as Florida Law Review, Nebraska Law Review, and Houston Law Review.

Sandra Zellmer
Alexander Blewett III School of Law
32 Campus Drive
Missoula, MT 59812-6552
406.243.6653
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