Letter to EPA on North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation

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
 

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
email

website

David Hunter is a Professor of Law and Director of the International Legal Studies Program at American University, Washington College of Law, the Director of the Washington Summer Session on Environmental Law.

Professor Hunter also currently serves on the Boards of Directors of the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide, EarthRights International, and the Project on Government Oversight (chair).

Professor Hunter specializes in international environmental law, US environmental law, environmental torts, international law and Institutions, and sustainable finance.

Professor Hunter was the former Executive Director of the Center for International Environmental Law, a non-governmental organization dedicated to protecting the global environment through the use of international law.  Mr. Hunter was formerly an environmental consultant to the Czech and Slovak environmental ministries, an Environmental Associate at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and Executive Director of WaterWatch of Oregon, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving western water laws.

Professor Hunter is author of many articles on international environmental law, and is co-author of the leading textbook in the field: International Environmental Law and Policy (Foundation Press, 3rd edition, 2006), as well as Climate Change and the Law, Lexis-Nexis Publishing, 2009. He is also the author of International Climate Negotiations: Opportunities and Challenges for the Obama Administration, 19 Duke Envtl. L. Pol’y F. 247 (2009) and Civil Society Networks and the Development of Environmental Standards at International Financial Institutions, 8 Chi. J. Int’l L. 437 (2008). Professor Hunter is co-author of the publications Narrowing the Accountability Gap: Toward a New Foreign Investor Accountability Mechanism, 20 Geo. J. Intl. Envtl. L. Rev.187 (Winter, 2008), Negligence in the Air: The Duty of Care in Climate Change Litigation, 155 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1741 (2007), The Biobio's Legacy: Institutional Reforms and Unfulfilled Promises at the International Finance Corporation, in Demanding Accountability (Rowman & Littlefield 2003).

Professor Hunter has also authored Implications of Climate Change Litigation for International Environmental Law-Making, in Hari Osofsky & Wil Burns, EDS., Adjudicating Climate Control: Sub-National, National and Supra-National Approaches (Cambridge Press, 2007), The Future of US Climate Policy, in Canada's Role In Addressing Climate Change(J. Brunnee, et al., eds., U. of Toronto Press 2007), and An Ecological Perspective on Property: A Call for Judicial Protection of the Public's Interest in Environmentally Critical Resources, 12 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 311 (1988) (reprinted in 20 Land Use & Envtl. L. Rev. (1989)).

He is a 1983 graduate of the University of Michigan with majors in economics and political science, and a 1986 graduate of the Harvard Law School.   

David Hunter
American University Washington College of Law
Washington, DC 
202.274.4415
email
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A. Dan Tarlock is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the Chicago- Kent College of Law and Honorary Professor UNECSO Centre for Water Law, Science and Policy, University of Dundee, Scotland. His teaching and research interests include environmental law, property, land use controls, biodiversity conservation and water law.

Professor Tarlock has previously been a permanent member of the faculties of the University of Kentucky and Indiana University, Bloomington. He has also visited at several law schools including the universities of Chicago, Pennsylvania, Hawai’i, Kansas, Michigan and Utah.

Professor Tarlock has served on several National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences committees studying the protection and recovery of stressed aquatic ecosystems, including a ten year review of the operation of Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River and a study of the restoration of the Missouri River ecosystem, published as The Missouri River Ecosystem: Exploring the Prospects for Recovery (2002). Professor Tarlock was a member of an NRC/ NAS committee to assess the future of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He is a member of the special legal advisors to the Submissions Unit of the Commission on Environmental Cooperation in Montreal, Canada, which administers the NAFTA Environmental Side Agreement.  He has lectured on the problems of ecosystem, natural resources and river basin management in Austria, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Kazakhstan, and Scotland as well as throughout the United States.

Professor Tarlock is the author of numerous articles and books on environmental law, land use controls and water law including, Water War in the Klamath: Macho Law, Combat Biology, and Dirty Politics (with Holly Doremus, 2008), Environmental Protection, Law and Policy (5rd ed Aspen Publishing, 2007) with Professor William Buzbee, Professor Robert Glicksman, Professor David Markell, Professor Daniel R. Mandelker, Water Resources Management with Professor James Corbridge and Professor David Getches, (5th ed 2002) and Law of Water Rights and Resources (1988 with annual updates).  Professor Tarlock was the chief report writer for the Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission report, Water in the West, which was one of the first major federal publications to examine the relationship between urban growth and water use.

Professor Tarlock holds an A.B. and LL.B. from Stanford University.

A. Dan Tarlock
Chicago-Kent College of Law
Chicago, IL
312.906.5217
email
website