Environmental and Land Use Law Curriculum

The NYU School of Law's first-year curriculum and its extensive upper-year courses, colloquia, and seminars in environmental and land use law provide students with a strong foundation in the theory and practice. The program's clinical courses in U.S. and international environmental law and community economic development enable students to apply their education to solving important environmental and land use problems in New York City , the nation, and the world.

The First Year

In their first year, students cover environmental and land use issues in their Property and Torts courses. Professors Been and Wyman teach first-year Property and regularly use land use and environmental problems as a springboard to discuss basic property law concepts.

Students also may elect to take a section of the Law School 's new Administrative and Regulatory State course that focuses on environmental regulation. The course was recently added to the first-year curriculum to give students a basic grounding in public law and regulation and to counterbalance the long-standing dominance of private law subjects in first-year courses. The section, taught by Professor Stewart, uses environmental regulation as a lens through which to explore the interplay between the legislative process, administrative implementation of regulatory statutes, judicial review of administrative action, and statutory interpretation in the development and implementation of regulatory programs. For students with an interest in environmental law, Stewart's section provides an invaluable introduction to many of the important themes and issues in current U.S. environmental law. “The Administrative and Regulatory State class didn't just turn me on to environmental and administrative law; it turned me on to the practice of law and the power that lawyers have to effect real change.” Warren Braunig ('05)

Upper Year Foundational Courses

Students interested in environmental or land use law usually begin their second year by taking one or more of several introductory survey courses.

Environmental Law

Environmental Law offers an introduction to the legal regulation of environmental quality. The course considers the theoretical foundations of environmental regulation, including economic and non-economic perspectives on environmental degradation; the scientific predicate for environmental regulation; the objectives of environmental regulation; the valuation of environmental benefits; the distributional consequences of environmental policy; and the choice of regulatory tools, such as command-and-control regulation, taxes, marketable permit schemes, liability rules, and informational requirements. The course then analyzes the role of the various institutional actors in environmental regulation, the allocation of regulatory authority in a federal system, and public choice explanations for environmental regulation. After laying that foundation, the course analyzes the principal federal environmental statutes.

I nternational Environmental Law

International Environmental Law surveys the customary law and treaty-based principles, rules, and institutions whereby states cooperate on transboundary and global environmental challenges. After a general introduction, the course focuses on issues currently shaping international environmental law, including global warming, declining fish stocks, the loss of biological diversity, the regulation of genetically modified organisms, and the potential clashes between environmental objectives and the rules and institutions of the World Trade Organization. The course combines lectures with interactive sessions in which students argue opposite sides of these controversial problems.

Land Use Regulation

Land Use Regulation examines how land use is shaped and controlled through government regulation. It begins by discussing the circumstances under which regulation might be needed to temper the private market ordering of land use patterns. It develops a typology of the kinds of regulatory and market-based tools that are available to control land use, and provides a framework for evaluating the appropriateness of alternative tools. It also explores the rights of an owner if a particular regulation of land is inefficient, unfairly burdensome, unfairly disruptive of the owner's settled expectations, or an infringement of the owner's civil liberties. The course then switches sides to examine the rights that those who oppose the landowner's plans may have to stop or modify the plans. Finally, the course focuses on particular problems that plague the land use regulatory system, such as the financing of development, exclusionary zoning, the fair distribution of undesirable land uses, and “smart growth.” Related foundational Courses In addition to the introductory environmental and land use courses, students interested in these subjects usually take related foundational courses, such as Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, Corporations, International Law, Local Government Law, Real Estate Transactions, Remedies, and Taxation.

Upper Year Advanced Courses, Seminars and Colloquia

To build on the foundational courses, students take specialized seminars and colloquia.

Advanced Environmental Law Seminar

Advanced Environmental Law tackles prominent issues in environmental and natural resources law and policy in the United States and abroad. Topics include the ongoing debate about the use of such analytical tools as cost-benefit analysis and the precautionary principle in establishing environmental objectives; the factors governing the choice between conventional command-and-control regulation and economic incentives for achieving environmental objectives; interjurisdictional disputes over the allocation of water; current controversies in the regulation of fisheries and marine mammals; environmental issues specific to densely populated urban areas; and trade-environment disputes, such as the conflict between the United States and Europe about the regulation of genetically modified organisms. The seminar is being co-taught by Professor Stewart and Professor Michael Oppenheimer of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and former head of the Climate Change Program at Environmental Defense. It focuses on international environmental governance and the role of science, engaging interdisciplinary teams of NYU and Princeton students to address current international environmental legal and policy problems, including climate change, ocean d fisheries, and conflicts over genetically modified foods.

Advanced Property Law: Theoretical and Comparative Aspects

This course examines private property as a fundamental basic right necessary to human flourishing, addressing issues such as the good faith purchase doctrine, the numerus clausus principle, compensation for injuries to property, dead hand control, property exempted in bankruptcy proceedings and redistribution through rules of property law from both theoretical and comparative perspectives. The course introduces students to the relevant theories in philosophy, economics and psychology

Colloquium on Globalization and Its Discontents

The Globalization and Its Discontents Colloquium provides a weekly forum in which leading international scholars from diverse fields present papers on legal and institutional responses to the consequences of globalization and discuss those papers with students and faculty in a lively roundtable format. The Colloquium convened by Professors Kingsbury and Stewart, focuses on global administrative law and the development of mechanisms for participation and accountability for international decision makers and institutions in environmental and other international regulatory areas, including the role of these mechanisms in protecting rights and promoting global democracy.

Colloquium on the Law, Economics, and Politics of Urban Affairs

This colloquium, taught jointly by law faculty (Professors Vicki Been, Lee Fennel or Clay Gillette) and faculty from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service (Professors Ingrid Gould Ellen or Amy Schwartz) enables students to explore current debates about critical urban policy issues. Leading scholars from economics, law, urban planning, and political science present early drafts of new research, which students then critique and discuss. Faculty from other area law schools and urban planning and economics programs, government officials, and policy-makers from both New York City and Washington , D.C. , also frequent the Colloquium.

Environmental Values, Policy and the Law

This course addresses the development of environmental values and laws to address global environmental change. It will examine the relationships between environment and development, addressing whether environmentalism as conventionally conceived has run its course, and whether such notions as sustainability, security, justice, the precautionary principle, and obligations to future generations provide new resources for reinvigorating environmental law.

Housing and Urban Development: Law and Policy

This seminar explores a broad range of issues concerning U.S. housing policy. Students study the historical development of interventions in the housing market as well the economic justifications for these interventions, and compare and contrast various regulatory and spending programs to meet housing needs. The course also addresses nonprofit, community-based housing, discrimination in the housing market, housing finance, and homelessness.

Indigenous Peoples in International Law

The Indigenous Peoples in International Law seminar, taught by Professor Kingsbury, discusses challenges to standard liberal concepts and to democratic theory posed by such issues as the meaning and problems of the concept of indigenous rights, the nature and meaning of the right to self-determination, tensions between individual rights and group rights, minority rights regimes in international law, the activities of multinational corporations, tensions between indigenous peoples' rights and environmental law, and indigenous peoples' rights under international trade and intellectual property regimes.

Law, New Technologies, and Risk Seminar

This seminar, taught by Professor Stewart, explores the role of law and legal institutions in addressing the environmental risks of new technologies. Most recently it focused on controversies over the benefits and risks of the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in foods and crops. It considered the role of public values and attitudes in relation to government regulation and consumer acceptance of GMO products and other new technologies, international trade/regulatory conflicts over GMOs, and the potential role of GMOs in developing country efforts to meet the food needs of their growing populations.

Property Theory

This seminar, taught by Professor Wyman, examines contemporary debates about property using a range of legal, historical, and philosophical materials. The seminar begins by considering four theoretical approaches to property law: the classic utilitarian justification for private property; the Lockean case for property; contemporary rights-based theories of property; and communitarian perspectives. The seminar applies these approaches to live controversies in areas such as environmental and intellectual property law. Drawing on the four theoretical perspectives, the seminar then addresses a range of topics, including property and economic development, the tragedy of the commons, the limits of property rights and markets, social norms, takings, and reparations.

Public Interest Environmental Law Practice

This course, taught by Professors Been, Stewart and Wyman, examines the practice of environmental public interest law by environmental groups and governmental agencies in the United States and internationally. It tackles issues related to the financing, strategy, accountability, and performance of such groups and agencies, and the role of the lawyer in environmental advocacy. Distinguished public interest law practitioners serve as guest speakers, and students are strongly encouraged to draw on their own experiences in environmental public-interest law work.

Real Estate Transactions

This course examines fundamental issues in real estate transactions, including financing, contracting, and conveyancing, with a primary focus on commercial transactions. Topics to be covered include: the structure of mortgage markets and the regulation of loan transactions; the law governing mortgages and related financing structures (such as installment land contracts and ground leases), including foreclosure and borrower protections; construction finance; suretyship (guaranties and related contracts); recording and lien priorities; contracts for the purchase and sale of real estate; conveyancing issues; and title insurance.

Seminar on Community Development Law

This seminar, taught by Adjunct Professor Tesdell, introduces students to major policy and legal issues related to housing, economic development, and development finance activities of community-based organizations. In simulation exercises, students grapple with policy concerns raised in class as they negotiate community control of resources, draft restrictions on the use of housing, design and create corporate structures, deal with regulatory constraints, and debate adoption of various corporate forms.

Seminar on Land Use, Housing, and Community Development in New York City

Co-taught by Adjunct Professors Gerecke and Salama, this seminar analyzes the roots and consequences of urban distress, and assesses federal, state, local, and community responses to urban distress. It reviews and analyzes initiatives to build housing and commercial projects in low income communities. Students work together in groups to provide research and policy analysis for local community based organizations.

Seminar on Trade, Investment, and Sustainable Development

This seminar, taught by Adjunct Professor Werksman, addresses the global and regional legal, institutional, and political structure shaping the way governments strike the balance between policy aimed at economic integration and growth, and those aimed at achieving other social and environmental objectives. The legal focus is the rules and institutions created under selected regional and bilateral investment treaties and the trade and intellectual rules under the World Trade Organization.

Urban Planning: Theoretical and Comparative Aspects

This course examines urban planning and regulation from theoretical and comparative perspectives. It will address the justifications for urban planning and deregulation, the efficiency and fairness of different expropriation and compensation regimes, cultural building preservation, the treatment of non-conforming uses, and betterment taxation. Israeli and European rules and institutions will be compared and contrasted with American ones. The theoretical analysis will include economic efficiency, game theory, the personhood theory, libertarianism, and theories of distributive justice.