Climate Change, Resilience, and Fairness: How Nonstructural Adaptation Can Protect and Empower Socially Vulnerable Communities on the Gulf Coast

Carmen G. Gonzalez is the Morris I. Leibman Professor of Law at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

She has taught courses on environmental law, hazardous waste and toxics regulation, torts, administrative law, international trade law, and international environmental law.

While in academia, Professor Gonzalez has advised the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on international environmental justice matters by serving as member and vice-chair of the International Subcommittee of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council. Professor Gonzalez also worked as legal representative for the Basel Action Network (a non-governmental organization seeking to curb the export of hazardous wastes to developing countries) during the negotiation of the Liability Protocol to the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. In 2010-2012, Professor Gonzalez was part of a team of U.S. law professors that was awarded a $650,000 grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to conduct environmental law capacity-building workshops for Central American law professors.  Finally, Professor Gonzalez served on the International Bar Association’s Working Group on Legal Aspects of Climate Change Adaptation and on the board of trustees of Earthjustice, a public interest environmental law firm.  In 2015, she was recognized as an environmental leader of color by Green 2.0, an organization working to increase diversity among mainstream environmental organizations, government agencies, and foundations.

After earning her B.A. from Yale University and her J.D. from Harvard Law School, Professor Gonzalez clerked for Judge Thelton E. Henderson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. She was subsequently an attorney at Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro, where she specialized in environmental litigation. From 1991 to 1994, Professor Gonzalez worked as a transactional attorney at Pacific Gas and Electric Company. From 1994 to 1998, Professor Gonzalez was assistant regional counsel in the San Francisco office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA). At EPA, Professor Gonzalez handled a wide variety of environmental cases involving Superfund and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. She also served on the U.S. EPA team addressing environmental problems along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Professor Gonzalez has published widely in the areas of international environmental law, environmental justice, and food security. In addition to her law journal publications, she is co-editor of International Environmental Law and the Global South (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Professor Gonzalez was a Fulbright Scholar in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she taught international environmental law at the Universidad del Salvador. She also spent a year in Ukraine working on a USAID-funded environmental law project. In 2004-2005, Professor Gonzalez served as one of four Supreme Court Fellows selected by a panel of distinguished lawyers and judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States. Professor Gonzalez was a visiting scholar at Cambridge University’s Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, and a visiting professor at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, a joint project of Johns Hopkins University and the University of Nanjing. In 2010-2011, she served as chair of the Environmental Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools, and she currently serves as co-chair of the Research Committee of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Academy of Environmental Law. Professor Gonzalez was selected as the George Soros Visiting Chair at the Central European University School of Public Policy in Budapest, Hungary for Spring 2017.

Carmen Gonzalez
Loyola University Chicago School of Law
Corboy Law Center
25 E. Pearson
Chicago, IL 60611
312-915-7044
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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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Robert R.M. Verchick holds the Gauthier ~ St. Martin Eminent Scholar Chair in Environmental Law at Loyola University New Orleans, is the Faculty Director of the Center for Environmental Law at Loyola, and is a Senior Fellow in Disaster Resilience Leadership, Tulane University. He is the President of the Center for Progressive Reform.

Verchick is an expert in climate change law, disaster law, and environmental regulation. In 2009 and 2010, he served in the Obama administration as Deputy Associate Administrator for Policy at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In that role he helped develop climate adaptation policy for the EPA and served on President Obama's Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force. In the fall of 2012, he researched climate adaptation policies in India as a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, supported by a Fulbright Award.

His work has appeared in many venues, including the California Law Review, the Southern California Law Review, and the environmental law journals at Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley. He is an author of three books, including the award-winning, Facing Catastrophe: Environmental Action for a Post-Katrina World (Harvard University Press 2010). Professor Verchick has taught as a visitor at several schools, including Peking University (China) and Aarhus University (Denmark), and has received several teaching awards. He has lectured across the United States, Europe, and Asia

Robert R.M. Verchick
Loyola University New Orleans
New Orleans, LA
504.861.5472
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Yee Huang, J.D., L.L.M, is a former CPR policy analyst.

Huang joined the staff in December 2008. Prior to that, her public interest experience had included internships with the Department of State in Vienna, Austria, and Windhoek, Namibia. She interned with the Center for International Environmental Law, researching avoided deforestation under the Kyoto Protocol. Ms. Huang also worked as a law clerk in the Water Branch of the Office of Regional Counsel for the Environmental Protection Agency, Region 3. During law school, Ms. Huang authored articles published in the University of Denver Water Law Review, the Florida Journal of International Law, and the Cardozo Law Review (with Christine A. Klein). 

Ms. Huang graduated cum laude from Rice University with a B.A. in biology. She received a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to study international law at the University of Kent in Brussels, Belgium, where she received an L.L.M. with distinction. Ms. Huang attended the University of Florida College of Law, where she co-chaired the 2008 Public Interest Environmental Conference and graduated cum laude.

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