Reclaiming Global Environmental Leadership: Why the United States Should Ratify Ten Pending Environmental Treaties

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
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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
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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
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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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website