A New Progressive Agenda for Public Health and the Environment

by Rena Steinzor and

Rena Steinzor

Rena Steinzor is the Edward M. Robertson Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, and a past president of the Center for Progressive Reform. She is the author of Why Not Jail? Industrial Catastrophes, Corporate Malfeasance, and Government Inaction.

Professor Steinzor has taught an environmental law survey course, seminars in risk assessments and critical issues in environmental law and science, administrative law, contracts, torts and counseling and negotiation. She has written in the areas of (1) regulatory dysfunction in agencies assigned to protect public health, worker and consumer safety, and the environment; (2) the role of centralized White House review on the protectiveness of regulation; (3) environmental federalism, including so-called "unfunded mandates" imposed on state and local governments by the federal government and the impact on public health of devolving authority and responsibility for solving environmental problems; (4) the implications of industry self-regulation on the protection of the environment and human health; (5) "market-based" alternatives to traditional regulation; and (6) political interference with regulatory science.

She is the editor, with Christopher Schroeder, of the CPR-sponsored book A New Progressive Agenda for Public Health and the Environment, published by Carolina Academic Press. She is also the editor, with Wendy Wagner, of the book Rescuing Science from Politics, published by Cambridge University Press in 2006. Her book, Mother Earth and Uncle Sam: How Pollution and Hollow Government Hurt Our Kids was published by the University of Texas Press in December 2007. With Professor Sidney Shapiro of Wake Forest Law School, she 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 published by the University of Chicago Press in 2010.

Professor Steinzor began her legal career in 1976, and entered academia in January 1994. From 1987 through 1993, she was associated - first as "of counsel" and ultimately as the partner in charge of the environmental practice - at Spiegel & McDiarmid, a 45-lawyer, Washington, D.C. firm representing approximately 400 cities, counties, states, and public agencies in the energy, environmental, communications, and transportation fields. The practice counseled federal, state, and municipal clients regarding compliance with federal and state laws and regulations.

Prior to joining Spiegel & McDiarmid, Professor Steinzor served as Staff Counsel, Subcommittee on Commerce, Transportation, and Tourism of the Energy and Commerce Committee, U.S. House of Representatives (James J. Florio, Chairman). She was the primary staff person responsible for legislation that became the "Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986" (Public Law 99-499) and the "Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act" (Public Law 99-519). She also prepared legislation to reauthorize the Toxic Substances Control Act during the 98th Congress.

Professor Steinzor has testified before Congress on several occasions, most recently regarding the impact of health, safety, and environmental regulations on the economy.

Rena Steinzor
University of Maryland Carey School of Law
Baltimore, MD
410.706 0564
email
website

Christopher Schroeder

Christopher H. Schroeder is a former Member Scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform, and the former Charles S. Murphy Chair, at Duke University School of Law, and Professor of Law and Public Policy Studies.

Professor Schroeder has taught and written in the areas of Environmental Law and Policy, Constitutional Law, Tort Law and Philosophy, and Administrative Law for more than 20 years.

While in academia, Schroeder has served as a consultant or advisor to the Solar Energy Research Institute, the Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Commission on Air Quality, the National Academy of Sciences, the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate, and the United States Department of Justice. Prior to beginning his academic career, Professor Schroeder represented Environmental Defense in rate-making proceedings before the California Utilities Commission, seeking the incorporation of energy conservation and renewable energy measures into the expansion plans of public utilities. Under contract with the Department of Energy, Professor Schroeder studied the impact of large-scale coal-fired power plants, and made recommendations urging development of smaller scale modular facilities. He has testified before committees of the United States House and the Senate on a variety of subjects.

Before entering teaching, Professor Schroeder was a partner in a small San Francisco law firm, devoting approximately one-third of his time to environmental representations involving California energy issues. He has also worked for Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, examining legal and institutional impediments to conservation and renewable resource development. He represented the Clean Air Trust in Whitman v. American Trucking Associations, a challenge to EPA's ozone and particulate matter standards, and is representing the Trust in administrative and judicial proceedings concerned with EPA's revisions to the New Source Review process. He currently serves on a National Academy of Sciences advisory committee, examining at EPA's request the use of data from non-therapeutic studies involving humans. Since entering teaching, Schroeder has taken several leaves of absence to do government service. He has served as chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and as special counsel to that committee. He also served for three years in the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, including as Acting Assistant Attorney General.

Professor Schroeder has written on a variety of subjects in the areas of environmental law and policy, risk regulation, constitutional law and the workings of democracy. He co-authors one of the leading environmental law casebooks, Environmental Regulation: Law, Science and Policy, now in its 4th edition and used in law schools and undergraduate courses throughout the country. He is currently editing a book to be published by Resources for the Future, Assessing EPA, which examines many facets of EPA's performance in the 1990s, with recommendations for reform or improvement.

Professor Schroeder has been special editor of four volumes of Law & Contemporary Problems, whose subject matters have been regulating the chemical industry, evaluating the EPA after its first 20 years, the independent council statute, and the relationship between law and politics. Together which Professor Robert Glicksman, Schroeder has co-authored several studies of the disposition of environmental cases in the federal courts, most recently including a study of the treatment of science in the federal courts. The most recent of these publications, which included a statistical analysis of all the cases in the federal courts of appeals in the last decade, was recognized as one of the five best articles in environmental law in 2001.

Professor Schroeder has published numerous articles and book chapters on environmental law and policy, on the regulation of risk, and on the development of environmental policy within a constitutional democracy. His articles have appeared in the Columbia Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and Law & Contemporary Problems, the Environmental Law Reporter and Litigation (the journal of the ABA Litigation Section), as well as in compilations and edited books. Recently, his writing has been examining the adequacy of so-called "third way" environmental solutions as a means to break through policy impasses, the implications of the Supreme Court's recent federalism decisions on environmental policy, and the role of the courts generally in influencing environmental law and policy.

Schroeder is a principal investigator on a pending NIEHS grant application to establish an Environmental Health Sciences Research Center at Duke, to study vulnerable populations, with emphasis on toxicogenomics, toxicogenetics and comparative biology. He sits on the executive committee of the Center for Environmental Solutions at Duke, a multi-disciplinary research center dedicated to studying and recommending constructive solutions to major international and national environmental problems. He also directs the Program in Public Law, which is devoted to public and professional education regarding the laws that regulate the behavior of public officials. Since September 11, 2001 he has spoken often on the war on terrorism, and the balance between civil liberties and national security. As information secrecy and government reorganization have implications for environmental law and policy, his research has begun turning to these terrorism-related issues as well.

Christopher Schroeder
Duke University School of Law
Durham, NC
919.613.7096
email
website

Over the last quarter century, much of the focus of federal regulatory policy in the areas of health, safety, and the environment has been gradually redirected away from protecting Americans against various harms and toward protecting corporate interests from the plain meaning of protective statutes. This book, edited by Christopher Schroeder and Rena Steinzor, delivers precisely what its title promises, a re-imagining of federal policy in these areas, with particular focus on the regulatory process. It identifies the failings of the current approach to regulation and proposes innovative, straightforward, and practical solutions for the 21st Century. The 2004 book was a seminal collaboration among the Member Scholars of the Center for Progressive Reform (then called the Center for Progressive Regulation).

The authors embrace an agenda built on three principles:

First, activities that harm people and the environment – even those routine to our way of life and economy – should be made as safe and clean as possible, certainly to the extent that they do not cause illness or death.

Second, optimism and confidence are necessary with respect to the technology and human ingenuity required to reduce risks to satisfactory levels, up to and including the belief that entirely new technologies can be developed to accomplish old functions at an affordable price.

Third, government at the national, state, and local levels has a crucial role to play in preserving collective values and protecting the public interest via lawmaking and enforcement.

The book is available on Amazon.