Topics
Environmental
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Who should drive an electric vehicle?
August 19, 2022
Research by Ashley Nunes, Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program fellow, found that many electric vehicle owners are doing more environmental harm than good.
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HLS Authors: Selected Alumni Books Summer 2022
July 15, 2022
From “American Shtetl” to “South to America”
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In this installment of “Cases in Brief,” Harvard Law Professor Richard Lazarus ’79 discusses the landmark citizen-suit case, Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (1992), which hindered the ability to bring environmental citizen suits for much of the 1990s.
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Inspiring change
April 22, 2022
On Earth Day, we highlight some of the work being done by Harvard Law students, scholars, clinics, and programs to address some our most pressing environmental issues.
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Figueres receives 2022 Great Negotiator award at HLS
April 21, 2022
As the former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres was in charge of the 2015 climate talks in Paris. In a conscious departure from earlier conferences, she declared that any agreement should be unanimous, rather than merely a consensus.
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Current electric vehicles subsidies fail to reduce overall emissions, says Harvard Law study
April 7, 2022
Subsidies offered by the federal government for the purchase of new electric vehicles (EVs) may actually increase total greenhouse gas emissions without similar aid for secondhand buyers, concludes a new study led by Ashley Nunes, Ph.D., a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program.
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Since 2018, Harvard Law students have been tracking environmental laws and regulations across administrations.
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Supreme Court preview: West Virginia v. EPA
February 28, 2022
Harvard Law expert Shaun Goho explains how a complicated Supreme Court case could have major implications for government agencies and the environment.
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Harvard Law Professor Christine Desan says the Biden administration is harnessing fiscal and monetary policy to bolster the economy, but should move faster to address climate change, crypto markets, public banking.
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Weighing President Biden’s first year
January 18, 2022
In this series, Harvard Law experts turn a critical eye to the Biden administration’s efforts on health care, the economy, criminal justice reform, and other areas important to Americans — and share their thoughts on its agenda for the future.
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Weighing President Biden’s first year: The environment
January 13, 2022
Harvard Law Professor Richard Lazarus says Biden has ‘quickly and effectively’ reversed many of former President Trump’s executive orders on the environment, but Congress ‘presents a major obstacle’ to the new administration.
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Waiving COVID vaccine patent rights? It’s complicated
December 27, 2021
Harvard Law Today recently spoke to Professors Terry Fisher and Ruth Okediji about COVID-19 vaccine challenges in the global south, waiving drug-maker patents, and what they propose to reform the system in time for the next pandemic.
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Electric slide
September 21, 2021
Helping key players across Massachusetts — including the City of Boston and environmental nonprofits — reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 is a focus for the Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School.
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Each year, half of HLS’ first-year J.D. students and around a quarter of LL.M. students participate in at least one of HLS' 11 Student Practice Organizations, with some involved in multiple organizations at once.
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Fourteen selected as Wasserstein Public Interest Fellows
August 6, 2021
This academic year, 14 Wasserstein Public Interest Fellows have been named at Harvard Law School.
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Hannah Perls ’20 and Hana Veselka Vizcarra of the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program assess the new administration’s efforts to address climate change.
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A focus on the environment
April 22, 2021
In recognition of Earth Day, we highlight some recent work and perspectives of Harvard Law's students and scholars committed to environmental change.
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Students in the Harvard Law School Environmental & Energy Law Program switch from tracking environmental rollbacks to analyzing how to the Biden-Harris administration can implement its ambitious climate plan.
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Freeman, Lazarus discuss Biden administration’s reversal of Trump’s environmental legacy
April 22, 2021
At a recent event, Harvard Law School Jody Freeman and Richard Lazarus gave an account of the environmental policy swing underway in the Biden administration.
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COVID and the law: What have we learned?
March 17, 2021
The effect of COVID-19 on the law has been transformative and wide-ranging, but as a Harvard Law School panel pointed out on the one-year anniversary of campus shutdown, the changes haven’t all been for the worse.
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The shape of discrimination
March 10, 2021
Harvard Law alum Daniel Aaron ’20 thinks high obesity rates among people of color may be another legacy of ongoing racism in America.
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Kennedy, Minow, Sunstein found new American Journal of Law and Equality
February 23, 2021
Three Harvard Law School professors have teamed up with MIT Press to launch a new journal focused on issues of inequality.
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Since President Joe Biden took office in January, dozens of Harvard Law community members, including faculty and alumni, have been tapped to serve in high-profile positions in his administration
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Scientists and law professors urge Biden to pull unlawful Endangered Species Act rules
February 12, 2021
Group led by Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Program petitions the president to immediately rescind key policies that restrict the government’s consideration of harms from greenhouse gas emissions on protected animals.
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Wendy Jacobs: 1956-2021
February 10, 2021
Wendy Jacobs, one of the nation’s most highly celebrated environmental law experts, was the founding director of the first-ever environmental law and policy clinic at Harvard Law School.
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Should smokers be prioritized for COVID vaccine?
February 2, 2021
Should smoking be among the pre-existing health risks that qualify people for priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine? Harvard Law public health expert Carmel Shachar says the answer is yes.
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Food Law and Policy Clinic releases report evaluating Farmers to Families Food Box Program
February 2, 2021
In their new report, An Evaluation of the Farmers to Families Food Box Program, Harvard's Food Law and Policy Clinic and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition highlight opportunities to make the program more equitable and effective amid the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
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Teaming up to promote access to water
December 9, 2020
As the only team members on their International Human Rights Clinic project, Laura Soundy ’22 and Rehab Abdelwahab ’21 have learned how critical it is to talk about subjects other than law. In doing so, they learned they were both quarantining in Texas, and have formed a plan to safely meet in person next year.
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HLS Authors: Fall 2020
October 20, 2020
Alumni books that shed light on what formed a president, a vice-presidential candidate, and a barrier-breaking empire builder, among other topics.
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Harvard scholars ponder putting an end to Columbus Day
October 9, 2020
The Harvard Gazette recently asked Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law Robert Anderson, and other members of the Harvard community, “Is this the end of Columbus Day, and how can America best replace it?”
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Confronting conflict pollution
September 30, 2020
A new report from the HLS International Human Rights Clinic and the Conflict and Environment Observatory establishes a new framework for addressing human harm resulting from the environmental consequences of conflict.
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Expansive racial justice movements ‘make other worlds possible’
September 30, 2020
“Racial Equality?,” a new year-long lecture series organized by Professors Randall Kennedy and Annette Gordon-Reed ’84, aims to address some of these acute issues with a wider lens that investigates both the paths to—and potential manifestations of—racial equality.
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“The very test under the Endangered Species Act is supposed to be ‘What is the best available science?'”
August 12, 2020
Katherine Meyer, director of the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Clinic, corresponded with Harvard Law Today about the clinic's recent Supreme Court amicus brief filing in a Freedom of Information Act case brought by the Sierra Club, concerning access to information regarding the adverse impacts of federal actions on endangered and threatened species.
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Making History in Environmental Law
August 12, 2020
In his new book “The Rule of Five,” Richard Lazarus goes behind the scenes of the biggest environmental law case in Supreme Court history.
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Beatrice Lindstrom, clinical instructor and supervising attorney in the International Human Rights Clinic, has been working for nearly a decade to secure accountability from the U.N. for a devastating cholera outbreak caused by UN peacekeepers in Haiti in 2010.
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Amid pandemic, new research provides a roadmap to fight hunger and climate change through increased food donation
June 10, 2020
The Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic has released The Global Food Donation Policy Atlas, a first-of-its-kind interactive resource to inspire long-term policy solutions to food waste, hunger, and climate change.
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João Marinotti ’20 wants to know how the world works
May 27, 2020
“I’ve always had a passion for engaging in my curiosity,” says João Marinotti ‘20, a linguist turned lawyer whose work focuses on sustainability, business, property, and private law.
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Machteld van Egmond LL.M. ’20: A physician-researcher with a curious mind turns to the practice of law
May 24, 2020
A physician-researcher, Machteld van Egmond LL.M. ’20 explored the intersections among empirical science, law, and medicine during her LL.M. year at Harvard Law School.
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Dylan Asafo LL.M. ’20 plans to use his HLS education to help address the inequalities facing communities of color in New Zealand and the wider Pacific region.
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How and why the Supreme Court made climate change history
April 23, 2020
The Harvard Gazette sat down with Richard Lazarus, a Supreme Court advocate and the Howard and Katherine Aibel Professor of Law, before the coronavirus quarantine to talk about his book “The Rule of Five: Making Climate Change History at the Supreme Court.”
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Environmental law clinic pushes back against federal efforts to roll back regulations
April 21, 2020
Students, faculty and staff in the Harvard Law School's Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic are still hard at work, pushing back against the current administration’s attempts to undo environmental regulations approved under former President Barack Obama ’91.
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No ‘silver lining’ for the climate
April 21, 2020
Jody Freeman discusses the progress the nation has made in protecting the environment since Earth Day was founded in 1970, the Trump administration’s efforts to undo Obama-era federal climate regulations, and COVID-19’s urgent lessons for the planet’s health.
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Waste not, want not
April 1, 2020
Harvard Law School Professor Emily Broad Leib ’08, director of the HLS Food Law and Policy Clinic, and her students have been working furiously to ensure that the most vulnerable—and ultimately the rest of us—are fed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Animal Law & Policy Program files amicus brief in Supreme Court challenging border wall
March 19, 2020
Harvard’s Animal Law & Policy Program filed its first Supreme Court brief challenging the Trump administration’s waiver of laws regarding the U.S.-Mexico border wall construction. Ashley Maiolatesi ’20 recently corresponded with Harvard Law Today about what is at stake, the specific ramifications of these waivers, and her own personal connection to the project.
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During Winter Term, 12 Harvard Law School students traveled to 12 countries as Cravath International Fellows to pursue clinical placements or independent research with an international, transnational, or comparative law focus.
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In soda tax fight, echoes of tobacco battles
February 19, 2020
Amid rising rates of diabetes and obesity in the nation, the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School recently hosted a panel discussion concerning levies—those enacted, those proposed and those failed—on sugary beverages in jurisdictions nationwide.
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‘Game Changers’ puts muscle behind its message at HLS
February 14, 2020
The old-fashioned notion that tough guys—and tough women—must eat meat was challenged by a panel of athletes and experts at Harvard Law School, following a screening of the popular documentary “The Game Changers.”