About the Center on Environmental and Land Use Law

Overview

The establishment of the Center on Environmental and Land Use Law caps a range of initiatives that NYU has taken to make the Law School the leading academic program among the top national law schools for the study of environmental and land use law. The Center's mission is to advance scholarly inquiry and writing, enhance legal training, and combine theory and practice to develop and help implement innovative legal and policy solutions to environmental protection at the national, regional and global levels.

The Center regularly sponsors major conferences and publications on leading-edge environmental law issues involving academic, government, NGO, and private sector leaders from throughout the United States and the world. One such conference was an international conference on Superfund Reform and on environmental law and regulation which was held at NYU's Villa in Florence, Italy and which included participants such as Justice Stephen Breyer of the United States Supreme Court and Lord Slynn of Hadley of the House of Lords.

NYU law students from the U.S. and abroad play an integral part in the Center's activities. For instance, through the School's environmental law clinic, students have the opportunity to work directly with the Natural Resources Defense Council—one of the nation's leading public interest environmental groups—and contribute to public interest environmental litigation and policy initiatives. In addition, fellowship placements in the International and Developing Country Legal Assistance Program offer students a unique opportunity to provide developing countries with practical assistance in strengthening and enforcing their environmental and land use laws and policies.

The Center also encourages and supports student research and writing and other environmental law activities through the NYU Environmental Law Journal and the Environmental Law Society. These activities are designed to train the next generation of environmental law leaders and develop new legal and policy mechanisms for environmental protection through application of the best scholarly research, practical experience, and international dialogue.

Focus Areas

The Center focuses its legal research and problem-solving in three principal subject areas:

Environmental Regulation

The Center undertakes research and applied policy projects to develop and promote new, more effective, and more efficient strategies of environmental regulation, including market-based incentives, new forms of property and contract, and information-based auditing and management systems. It is also engaged in the development and practical application of new, improved analytical tools for environmental regulatory decision making, including the development of cost-benefit methods that adequately value all of the environmental benefits provided by regulation and avoid undue discounting o future benefits. The development of these new strategies and methods requires a close analysis of the relationships between economics and environmental protection, including the interplay between competition, trade, investment, government institutions, and policy in federal and international systems, the role of cost-benefit and risk analysis in environmental law, and the need to consider distributional issues in the design of policy instruments.

International Environmental Law and Sustainable Development

The Center conducts research on the development and implementation of innovative measures of both public and private international law to protect our global environment while ensuring sustainable development through the deployment of new regulatory instruments (including the use of economic instruments), and improved techniques for implementation (including informational requirements and liability) at the national and international levels. It also assist developing countries, countries with transition economies, and international environmental groups in building and implementing more effective strategies for environmental protection and development, including projects on developing country law reform, promotion of public access to information and public participation, and the development of international laws and institutions that take proper account of the needs of developing countries. The Center also helps build more accountable international environmental governance through the Global Administrative Law project.

Land Use Law and Regulation

Research and applied projects in the field of land use, law, real estate law, housing, and urban policy is conducted by the Center together with the Furman Center on Real Estate and Urban Policy. Current research focuses on pricing development to internalize all of its social and economic costs, the impact of public and private investments in neighborhoods, and New York City neighborhood and housing issues. NYU hosts frequent conferences and meetings involving faculty and students together with government officials, representatives of the real estate industry, and public interest housing and land use groups to discuss current policy issues such as the use of eminent domain in economic redevelopment projects, the costs and benefits of rent regulation, the impact of immigration on housing, and policies to promote affordable housing.