Without Public Protections, Florida Will Suffer

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

Mary Jane Angelo is a Samuel T. Dell Professor of Law, Director of the Environmental and Land Use Law Program, and Alumni Research Scholar at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. She is also Affiliate Faculty in both the University of Florida School of Natural Resources and Water Institute.

Angelo has published extensively on a variety of environmental law topics including pesticide law, endangered species law, water and wetlands law, sustainable agriculture, the regulation of genetically modified organisms, and the relationship between law and science.  Her articles have been published in the Texas Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review, George Mason Law Review, Harvard Environmental Law Review, Ecology Law Quarterly, and Environmental Law.  In 2013, she published two books: Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Law (with William S. Eubanks and Jason Czarnezki, Environmental Law Institute 2013) and The Law and Ecology of Pesticides and Pest Management (Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2013). She serves on two National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council Committees: The Committee on Independent Scientific Review of Everglades Restoration Progress; and the Committee on Ecological Risk Assessment under FIFRA and the ESA. She is also a member of the Vermont law School Summer faculty and has taught and lectured throughout the United States and other parts of the world, including Brazil, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Belize and Poland.

Prior to joining academia, Angelo practiced as an environmental lawyer for many years.  She served in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of the Administrator and Office of General Counsel in Washington, D.C., and as Senior Assistant General Counsel for the St. Johns River Water Management District in Florida.  Her substantial environmental law practice has included water law, wetlands law, endangered species law, pesticides law, biotechnology law, and hazardous and toxic substances law.

She received her B.S., with High Honors, in biological sciences from Rutgers University, and both her M.S., in Entomology, and J.D., with Honors, from the University of Florida. 

Mary Jane Angelo
University of Florida Levin College of Law
Gainesville, FL
352.273.0944
email
website
SSRN