LAW SCHOOL CORNER
This fourth edition of the Law Student Corner highlights students and their work at six law schools. If you know any schools or students who would like to participate, please email [email protected].
In February, Pace-Haub Law hosted the 35th annual Jeffrey G. Miller National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition (NELMCC). Over 50 teams competed in this year’s competition. In the final round, the team from Columbia Law School prevailed. The winning team members—Anne Li, Max Cornell, and Kai Saleem—are featured below.
Meet Anne Li (Columbia, 1L), Max Cornell (Columbia, 1L), and Kai Saleem (Columbia, 1L), the winning team of the 35th annual NELMCC, all of whom are first-year law students. Max, Anne, and Kai shared their experience in the competition and their future plans.
The trio highlighted different motivations when asked why they decided to compete in NELMCC. Max shared that he came to law school wanting to learn to protect non-human life, noting that environmental law was a key tool. He selected NELMCC because he wanted to build creative arguments muscle in a relevant field. For Kai, competing in NELMCC was a chance to bond with other students interested in environmental law. Anne, on the other hand, was not particularly interested in environmental law, but more in overlapping social issues, including housing and health.
All three students found their NELMCC experience to be rewarding, even though the brief was extremely challenging as first-year law students. Kai loved the competition and hanging out with her team, while Anne appreciated the opportunity to develop her oral advocacy skills with coaches, William Donaldson ’24, Jack Jones ’24, and Abby Pelton ’24, leading up to the competition. Anne also liked that despite having significant errors in their brief, due to them having less than one semester of law school under their belts, they were able to substantively progress before the competition. Max found it rewarding to work with both his teammates and his coaches.
All three are Public Interest/Public Service (PI/PS) Fellows and hope to work in public interest at some point after graduation. Max, a former electrical engineer, hopes to do impact litigation at a Big Green. Kai, a former state-level environmental lobbyist, aims to work on energy regulations and policy. Anne, a former employee of the National League of Cities, wants to do legislative advocacy for policies related to mental health, homelessness, and crisis response. In addition to Anne, Max, and Kai, many New York law students are doing impressive work related to environmental law.
After living in an environmental justice community in New York City, Lindsay Matheos (CUNY, 2L) became passionate about environmental law. During law school, Lindsay co-founded Indigenous Americans and Law Student Advocates (IALSA) and wrote a paper titled Superfunded: Rethinking Responsible Remediation and Redevelopment of Brownfield and Superfund-Adjacent Sites in New York City for a Land Use and Community Lawyer course. Specifically, she explored “green gentrification” and argued that the phenomenon is the byproduct of a confluence of urban planning mechanisms and tax incentives that work together to incentivize irresponsibly large and costly developments in vulnerable communities on toxic and neglected land. Lindsay focused on the effects of Opportunity Zones, the Brownfield Cleanup Program, and Brownfield Opportunity Areas to support her argument. Currently, she is also interning with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility to support government whistleblowers with their environmental claims. This summer she will be interning with EPA Region 2.
Jaclyn Spencer (CUNY, 2L) was a high school history teacher in New York City prior to law school. Many of her students were living in EJ communities. She saw the impact that had on students and their families, so she decided to pursue environmental law in hopes of helping address these environmental issues in her community. Last summer, Jaclyn interned with DEC Region 2 in Queens. She also spent time commenting on the PM2.5 levels for the new NAAQS. This semester she is interning with the Wilderness Society on a project in Alaska. Additionally, Jaclyn co-authored an article with CUNY Professor Rebecca Bratspies on the Green Amendment that appears in this issue of the Journal.1 Jaclyn is looking forward to working for the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest in their Environmental Justice Division this summer.
Student Publications and Writings
Mariah Bowman (2L, Pace-Haub Law), this year’s student chair of NELMCC, wrote an article titled Nonhuman Rights: The Case of Happy the Elephant. Her article was accepted for GW University Law School’s Animals and the Anthropocene: A Legal Scholarship Symposium. Mariah is not the only law student in New York making contributions to legal scholarship.
- Brianna Grimes (2L, Pace-Haub Law), Why Releasable Marine Mammals Deserve To Be Released, Chicago-Kent J. of Env’t & Energy L. (forthcoming 2023).
- Mia Petrucci (3L, Pace-Haub Law), Animals Too Ugly to Protect? The PACT Act Needs an Update, Ecology Law Quarterly: Currents.
- Mauren Hartwell (1L, Pace-Haub Law), Local Climate Action Planning—The Land Use Perspective, ZPLR (forthcoming 2023).
- Haley Pedicano (2L, Pace-Haub Law), Gabriella Mickel (Pace-Haub Law and YSE), and John Nolon, Constructing a Sustainable Future: Net-Zero Cities, 38 Nat. Res. & Env’t (forthcoming Summer 2023).
- Gabriella Mickel (‘23, Joint Degree Pace-Haub Law and YSE), ESG and Regulated Disclosure, in ESG for Legal Professionals (Am. Bar Ass’n.) (forthcoming 2023).
- Jillian Houle’s (2L, Pace-Haub Law) op-ed, “Less is more when it comes to road salt,” was published in the New Hampshire Union Leader.
- Krystle Okafor (recent graduate, NYU), Community Ownership in New York City: The Housing Development Fund Corporation, 30.3 N.Y.U. Env’t L.J. 413 (2022).
- Samantha Daisy (3L, Columbia), Choosing Words Wisely: Climate Agreements Viewed Through a Legal Contractual Framework, 48.1 Colum. J. Env’t L. 136 (2022).
- Nicole Franki (3L, Columbia), Regulation of the Voluntary Carbon Offset Market: Shifting the Burden of Climate Change Mitigation from Individual to Collective Action, 48.1 Colum. J. Env’t L. 177 (2022).
The annual New Directions in Environmental Law (NDEL), organized jointly between the Yale School of the Environment and Yale Law School, is back. This year, the conference was held in conjunction with the Food Law Student Network Conference with the help of Pace|Haub Environmental Law from March 31 to April 1, 2023.
From top, left to right: Hailey Pedicano (Pace Law ’24); Gina Hervey (YSE/Pace Law ’24); Colin Pohlman (Lewis & Clark Law ’24); Brianna Grimes (Pace Law ’24); Joshua Briggs (Pace Law ’24); Professor Josh Galperin, joint degree coordinator, Pace-Haub Law Professor; Brooke Mercaldi (YSE/Pace Law ’24); Allison King (Seton Hall Law ’24); Samantha Capaldo (Drake Law ’23); Stephanie Prufer (YSE ’24); and Maddy Tran (YSE ’24).
The NYU Environmental Law Journal hosted a symposium titled Building Effective, Sustainable, and Equitable Infrastructure on April 3. The symposium centered on the impact of recent legal and legislative developments such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Inflation Reduction Act, and FY 2023 Omnibus Bill on infrastructure projects. Additionally, the symposium explored the effects of infrastructure on aquatic animal life and the required mitigation strategies.
Earlier this year, Cornell’s Environmental Law Society hosted a Q&A webinar titled Justice for Victims of Water Pollution featuring Rob Bilott. Bilott is best known for his legal battle against DuPont, which led to him being dubbed by The New York Times Magazine as “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare.” Since the DuPont case, he has continued representing clients who have been harmed by “forever chemicals,” such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS), as a member of Taft Law’s Environmental, Litigation, and Product Liability and Personal Injury practices.
On Feb. 10, 2023, the Fordham Urban Law Journal hosted its 2023 symposium, titled Building a Greener Future Through Urban Sustainability. The symposium explored topics related to urban climate adaptation and resilience, including flood prevention, electrification of the transportation and buildings sectors, efforts to equitably transition to clean energy, and other important environmental justice considerations. Panelists included scholars, government and agency appointees, technical experts, and environmental advocates. Vicki Arroyo, EPA associate administrator for policy, also gave a keynote address at the event.
In December, Pace|Haub Law hosted its annual Environmental Law & Policy Hack. Schools competing in 2022 were challenged to propose innovative private environmental governance interventions to spur meaningful on-the-ground environmental progress. Four finalist teams from University of Vanderbilt School of Law, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, University of Miami School of Law, and a joint Yale School of the Environment and Yale School of Management team were judged by experts in the field, including Maria Jose Gutierrez Murray (senior director of international programs for Tradewater), Roger Martella (vice president, chief sustainability officer for General Electric), and Maram Salaheldin (attorney at law on Clark Hill’s Environmental & Natural Resources and International Trade practice groups). Ultimately, the University of Miami School of Law won and received funds to implement their winning proposal.
Endnotes
1. See “Avoiding Mistakes When Implementing the Green Amendment.”
