Letter to House Judiciary Committee Chair Goodlatte, Ranking Member Conyers re HR 2887.

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
email
website
SSRN

Christine A. Klein is the Cone, Wagner, Nugent, Hazouri & Roth Professor, University Term Professor, and Director, LL.M. Program in Environmental & Land Use Law at the University of Florida, Levin College of Law, Gainesville.

Professor Klein has taught Environmental Law, Land Use Law, Natural Resources Law, Property, Water Law, and Wetlands Law. In addition, she is the coordinator of the Environmental Capstone Colloquium, a course required of all students in the Environmental and Land Use Law Certificate Program.

During her early years of legal practice, Professor Klein worked as legal counsel for Colorado's instream flow program. She has continued to write on the topic of water law and stream protection, and her work has been cited in support of the legality of instream flows by the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Montana. Her subsequent moves to Michigan and Florida have allowed her to develop a national perspective on state water law regimes. She lectures widely on the topic, providing public education and professional training for organizations such as the U.S. Forest Service, the American Water Works Association, the Conference of Appellate Staff Attorneys, the Askew Institute (Florida), Women for Wise Growth (Florida), the Institute for Trade in the Americas (Michigan State University), the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (Michigan State University), the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and the Michigan Environmental Health Association.

Professor Klein began her legal career as a law clerk to Judge Richard P. Matsch, District of Colorado. She then worked in the Office of the Colorado Attorney General, Natural Resources Section, where she specialized in water rights litigation and instream flow protection. After obtaining her LL.M. degree in law from Columbia University, she taught for eight years at Michigan State University College of Law, where she served as chair of the law college's program in Environmental and Natural Resources Law. She has also worked as a visiting professor at the University of Denver College of Law and as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Colorado School of Law (Natural Resources Law Center). She joined the faculty of the University of Florida in 2003.

Professor Klein's scholarship focuses on topics at the intersection of natural resources law and other legal disciplines including constitutional law, property law, and land use law. She also writes broadly in the area of water law.

Christine Klein
University of Florida Levin College of Law
Gainesville, FL 32611
352.273.0964
email
website
SSRN

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
email
website

Sidney A. Shapiro holds the Fletcher Chair in Administrative Law at the Wake Forest University School of Law and is the Associate Dean for Research and Development. He is a member of the board of directors of the Center for Progressive Reform.

Professor Shapiro has taught and written in the areas of Administrative Law, Regulatory Law and Policy, Environmental Policy, and Occupational Safety and Health Law for 25 years.

While in academia, Shapiro has served as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress (OTA), and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). With Professor Thomas O. McGarity, Professor Shapiro designed and helped initiate a rulemaking prioritization process for OSHA rulemaking during the early 1990s. As a consultant to OTA, Professor Shapiro assessed various regulatory tools or options that agencies can use to implement regulation. As a consultant to ACUS, Professor Shapiro studied the efficacy of the regulatory process at EPA (noise control), OSHA, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Professor Shapiro began his legal career as a trial attorney in the Bureau of Competition of the Federal Trade Commission and later worked as the Deputy Legal Counsel, Secretary's Review Panel on New Drug Regulation at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

Professor Shapiro has published widely in the areas of regulatory law and policy. He co-authored The People’s Agents and the Battle to Protect the American Public: Special Interests, Government, and Threats to Health, Safety, and the Environment, with CPR President, Rena Steinzor. This book reviewed years of government actions and inactions leading to the decline of the five protector agencies. His book, Risk Regulation at Risk: Restoring a Pragmatic Approach, analyzes health and safety and environmental protection laws and policy, and argues for a pragmatic approach to policy in these areas instead of using economic analysis to set regulatory goals. Workers at Risk, co-authored with Thomas O. McGarity, describes rulemaking, implementation and enforcement in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from its inception in 1970 through 1990. The book analyzes OSHA's strengths and weaknesses and makes many recommendations for improving standard-setting and enforcement. Shapiro's casebook, Administrative Law and Procedure: A Problem Approach, co-authored with William Funk and Russell Weaver, is used in administrative law courses at law schools throughout the country. His casebook, Regulatory Policy and Law, is the first of its kind, and is used to train lawyers to evaluate and advocate for public policy.

Professor Shapiro has published dozens of articles on regulatory policy, health and safety laws, environmental law and administrative law in prominent law reviews, such as the Harvard Law Review, Duke Law Journal and the Wake Forest Law Review, as well as in specialty journals, such as the Administrative Law Review and the Ecology Law Quarterly.

Professor Shapiro has been an active participant in efforts to improve health, safety and environmental quality in the United States. He has testified before congressional committees on administrative law and occupational safety and health issues. He has worked with various public interest groups in advisory and support capacities, including Public Citizen Global Trade Watch, Public Citizen Congress Watch, and OMB Watch. 

Sidney Shapiro
Wake Forest University School of Law
Winston-Salem, NC
336.758.7320
email
website

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

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
website