Richard Lazarus

In 1994, President Clinton issued Executive Order 12898, which made Environmental Justice a national priority. In recognition of the 20th anniversary of President Clinton’s Executive Order, the Harvard Law School Environmental Law Society (HELS) hosted the National Association of Environmental Law Societies (NAELS) 26th Annual Conference, on March 28–29, 2014, titled “Environmental Justice: Where Are We Now?”

Students and recent graduates share their experiences with the Environmental Law and Policy Program at Harvard Law and discuss the influence that participation in the range of offerings has had on their academic and professional careers in Environmental Law.

Having completed its first phase of growth, the Harvard Law School Environmental Law and Policy Program is now looking to strengthen and build. “We’ve gone from zero to 100 in a very short period of time,” says HLS Professor Jody Freeman, program founder and director. “And I feel as if we are just getting started.”

Newly confirmed Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy on Tuesday pledged action on climate change during the Obama administration’s remaining years, saying the concern is as much economic as it is environmental.

Environmental lawlessness was the topic of discussion on April 10, as Richard Lazarus ’79, one of the nation’s foremost experts on environmental law, gave a lecture marking his appointment to the Howard J. and Katherine W. Aibel Professorship of Law.

“Medical tourism—the travel of patients who are residents of one country (the ‘home country’) to another country for medical treatment (the ‘destination country’)—represents a growing and important business," writes Assistant Professor I. Glenn Cohen ’03 in a recent article.

According to U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., the defining feature of his job—the most challenging, rewarding aspect—is grappling with what the position of the United States should be on an issue. At a talk on Wednesday, Oct. 31 at Harvard Law School, Verrilli explained that this task is harder than it might seem, involving a balancing of interests and making considered decisions on whether the U.S. should modify a previously held position.

“HLS Thinks Big,” inspired by the global TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) talks and modeled after the college’s “Harvard Thinks Big” event, was held at Harvard Law School on May 23 in Austin North. During the event, five professors presented some of their favorite topics.

On his priorities for the HLS Environmental Law Program, his experience arguing before the Supreme Court and on why climate change legislation is especially vulnerable to being unraveled over time.

This spring, hundreds of people packed the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court to hear a challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, in one of the most closely watched cases of the year. Among them were the students in Professor Richard Lazarus’ Advanced Environmental Law in Theory and Application class.

On April 25th, Harvard Law School celebrated Justice John Paul Stevens’ 35 years of service on the Supreme Court with an event honoring his work and his contributions to the fields of environmental, energy, and natural resources law.

There are two things former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement ’92 won’t do: Tell you where he stands on same-sex marriage, and grouse about the controversy that enveloped him last spring when he resigned from his law firm in order to continue defending U.S. House of Representatives Republicans in litigation over the Defense of Marriage Act.

The United States is experiencing “an environmental law-making crisis,” said Harvard Law School Professor Richard Lazarus at “Harvard Thinks Green,” an environmental sustainability event held at Harvard in December. The event was co-hosted by Harvard Thinks Big, the Office for Sustainability and the Center for the Environment at Harvard University.

On September 28, the Harvard Law School Environmental Law Program and Environmental Law Institute hosted a Supreme Court Review and Preview to discuss the implications of recent Supreme Court decisions on the field of environmental law. Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow introduced the event, and emphasized the Supreme Court’s role in the formation of environmental policy in the United States.

In August, Professor Richard Lazarus ’79 was honored at the ABA annual meeting in Toronto with the association’s Award for Distinguished Achievement in Environmental Law and Policy. The award was given to Lazarus for his significant leadership in improving environmental protection and sustainable development.

Richard J. Lazarus ’79, one of the nation’s foremost experts on environmental law and also a leading practitioner in the U.S. Supreme Court, will join the Harvard Law School faculty this summer as a tenured Professor of Law.

Environmental law expert Richard Lazarus ’79 has been appointed the executive director of a new bipartisan commission created by President Barack Obama ’91 to examine the causes of the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

This fall, students in Richard Lazarus’s Advanced Environmental Law course were deeply engaged with environmental law literature in somewhat non-traditional ways. Over the course…

On April 1, the Court issued a ruling in one of Lazarus’s most recent cases: Entergy v. Riverkeeper. Here, he discusses that case, as well as trends in environmental law more broadly.