The Clean Power Plan: Issues to Watch

William W. Buzbee is the Edward and Carole Walter Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and a founding Member Scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform.

Professor Buzbee holds the inaugural Edward and Carole Walter Professor chair and is a Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He also serves as the Faculty Director of Georgetown Law’s Environmental Law & Policy Program. In his teaching and scholarship, he specializes in environmental law, legislation and regulation, and administrative law. Recent publications focus on climate regulation, deregulation and law governing agency policy change, and federalism. He also offers seminars on advanced environmental, regulatory, and constitutional law subjects.

Professor Buzbee’s books include Fighting Westway: Environmental Law, Citizen Activism, and the Regulatory War that Transformed New York City (Cornell University Press 2014) and Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law and Reality of Federalism’s Core Question (Cambridge University Press, hardcover 2009, paperback 2011). He has been a co-author of the 5th , 6th, 7th and 8th editions of Environmental Protection: Law and Policy (Aspen/Wolters Kluwer).

Law review scholarship includes publications in New York University Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Stanford Law Review (co-authored), Cornell Law Review (co-authored), Duke Law Journal, George Washington Law Review, Iowa Law Review, Wisconsin Law Review, The Journal of Law and Politics and in an array of other journals, books, news outlets, and blogs. He regularly assists with appellate and Supreme Court environmental, federalism, and regulatory litigation, and also has testified before congressional committees on environmental and regulatory matters. He has published op-eds on regulatory and environmental issues with The New York Times, The Hill, CNN, and he has been quoted and interviewed by numerous press and media outlets.

Professor Buzbee joined Georgetown from Emory Law School, where he was a professor of law and directed its Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program. He also spearheaded the creation of Emory’s Turner Environmental Law Clinic and later served as the Advisory Board Chair. He also co-directed Emory’s Center on Federalism and Intersystemic Governance. He has been a visiting professor of law at Columbia, Cornell and Illinois law schools. He has also served as a professor for the Leiden-Amsterdam-Columbia Law School Summer Program in American Law. Professor Buzbee was awarded the 2007-2008 Emory Williams Teaching Award for excellence in teaching. Professor Buzbee clerked for United States Judge Jose A. Cabranes, and before becoming a professor was an attorney-fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council, and did environmental, land use and litigation work for the New York City law firm, Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler. He earned a JD from Columbia Law School in 1986 and a BA from Amherst College, magna cum laude, in 1983.

William W. Buzbee
Edward and Carole Walter Professor of Law
Georgetown University Law Center
McDonough 574
600 New Jersey Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001
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David M. Driesen is a University Professor at Syracuse University College of Law, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School. He is a member of the editorial board of the Carbon and Climate Law Review, published in Berlin and Environmental Law, published in Oxford.

Professor Driesen has taught and written in the areas of environmental law, international environmental law, and constitutional law for many years.

While in academia, Professor Driesen has devoted significant time to defending the constitutionality of environmental law. He represented the United States Public Interest Research Group Education Fund in the American Trucking case before the Supreme Court, public health groups in defending California’s Clean Fuel Fleet Programs against a preemption challenge, and constitutional law professors in defending the Endangered Species Act’s constitutionality. He also represented several United States Senators, including Hilary Clinton, in a challenge to EPA's new source review rules in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He has acted as a consultant for American Rivers and other environmental groups on Clean Water Act issues stemming from the Supreme Court's federalism decisions. And he has testified before Congress on lessons from the implementation of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments.

Professor Driesen worked as a project attorney and then senior project attorney in the air and energy program for the Natural Resources Defense Council. He also served on EPA National Pollution Control Techniques Advisory Committee. Prior to that time, he was an Assistant Attorney General in the Special Litigation Division of the Washington State Attorney General's Office and a law clerk to Justice Robert Utter of the Washington State Supreme Court.

Professor Driesen has published widely in the areas of environmental law and policy.  He edited and contributed two chapters in Economic Thought and U.S. Climate Change Policy, MIT Press 2009, and edited and contributed one chapter in Beyond Environmental Law: Policy Proposals for a Better Environmental Future, edited with fellow CPR Member Scholar Alyson Flournoy. His book, The Economic Dynamics of Environmental Law (MIT Press 2003), reframes the debate over regulatory reform to take change over time into account. The book argues that static efficiency-based approaches fail to adequately address the tendency of rising population and consumption to increase environmental destruction over time. The book critiques cost-benefit analysis, emissions trading, and free trade-based restrictions on international environmental protection and recommends reforms rooted in an economic dynamic analysis. Professor Driesen received the Lynton Keith Caldwell Award for the book. His most recent book, The Economic Dynamics of Law (Cambridge University Press 2012) further develops the economic dynamic theory and applies it to climate disruption and to subjects outside the environmental realm. He, along with Robert Adler and Kirsten Engel, has also written the textbook, Environmental Law: A Conceptual and Pragmatic Approach (Aspen 3rd ed. 2016).

Professor Driesen has published articles on emissions trading in  Environmental Law, Harvard Environmental Law Review, and leading environmental journals, on cost-benefit analysis in Ecology Law Quarterly, Colorado Law Review and Environmental Law, and on free trade and the environment in the Virginia Journal of International Law. His articles on constitutional law have appeared in the Cornell Law Review and elsewhere. His writing critiquing the dichotomy between "command and control" regulation and economic incentives has been especially widely cited and has helped spawn a more sophisticated third generation literature on economic incentives.

Professor Driesen is known primarily as a critic of efficiency-based law and economics and as a proponent of an alternative approach based on institutional economics and emphasizing stimulation of innovation. He plays trumpet with the Excelsior Cornet Band and the Syracuse University Brass Ensemble. Before going to law school he taught and performed in symphony orchestras in the United States, Brazil, Mexico, and Austria, learning German, Portuguese, and Spanish in the process.  

David Driesen
Syracuse University College of Law
Syracuse, NY 
315.443.4218
email
website

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Twitter: @dmdriesen

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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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

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Alice Kaswan is a Professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law.

Professor Kaswan received her J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School, and a B.S., with highest honors, in Conservation and Resource Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. After law school, she clerked for the Hon. Marie L. Garibaldi on the New Jersey Supreme Court. She then practiced land use and environmental law with Berle, Kass, & Case, a boutique environmental and land use law firm in New York City, and environmental law with Morgan, Lewis, & Bockius’ New York City office. She taught at Catholic University School of Law from 1995 until 1999, and joined the USF faculty in 1999. At USF, she teaches Environmental Law, Administrative Law, International Environmental Law, and Property. 

Professor Kaswan’s recent scholarship has focused on the federalism and environmental justice implications of domestic climate change policy. Earlier work explored theories of environmental justice and the relationship between environmental laws and the pursuit of environmental justice.

Alice Kaswan
University of San Francisco School of Law
415.422.5053
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Alexandra Klass is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. She is on leave from that position while she serves in the Biden administration.

Professor Klass teaches and writes in the areas of energy law, natural resources law, environmental law, tort law, and property law. Her recent scholarly work, published in many of the nation’s leading law journals, addresses regulatory challenges to integrating more renewable energy into the nation’s electric transmission grid, siting and eminent domain issues surrounding interstate electric transmission lines and oil and gas pipelines, and applications of the public trust doctrine to modern environmental law challenges.

She is a co-author of Energy Law and Policy (West Academic Publishing 2015) (with Davies, Osofsky, Tomain, and Wilson), The Practice and Policy of Environmental Law (Foundation Press, 4th ed. 2017) (with Ruhl, Salzman, and Nagle), Energy Law: Concepts and Insights (Foundation Press 2017) (with Hannah Wiseman), and Natural Resources Law: A Place-Based Book of Problems and Cases (Aspen, 4th ed. 2018) (with Klein, Cheever, Birdsong, and Biber). Prior to her teaching career, Professor Klass was a partner at Dorsey & Whitney LLP in Minneapolis, where she specialized in environmental law and land use litigation. She received her B.A. from the University of Michigan and her J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School.

She was a law clerk to the Honorable Barbara B. Crabb, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. She is a Fellow and Faculty Leadership Council member at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment. She served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Minnesota Law School from 2010-2012. She was a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School in 2015.

Alexandra Klass
University of Minnesota Law School
Minneapolis, MN
612.625.0155
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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
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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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