22 March: U.S. Environmental Law under the Trump Administration, Professor Robert Glicksman

The advent of modern environmental law in the United States beginning in 1970 was made possible because of a bipartisan consensus on the importance of protecting the public health and preserving the nation’s natural resource heritage.  Over the ensuing decades, several efforts by presidents or congressional leaders to alter those basic commitments ran aground.  Attacks on core environmental legislation such as the Endangered Species Act failed, and laws such as the Clean Air Act were strengthened, even under Republican presidents.

The election in 2016 of Donald Trump as President dramatically changed this landscape. The bipartisan consensus in favor of environmental protection has been shattered and the likelihood of radical reform that fundamentally weakens U.S. environmental law is significant.  This presentation will review the steps that President Trump’s Administration, backed by Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, have already taken and have promised to take.  If implemented, these changes will make U.S. environmental law unrecognizable to anyone familiar with its substance and process over the past half century.

Robert L. Glicksman is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on environmental, natural resources, and administrative law issues. A graduate of the Cornell Law School, his areas of expertise include environmental, natural resources, administrative, and property law. Before joining the law school faculty in 2009, Professor Glicksman taught at the University of Kansas School of Law, where he joined the faculty in 1982 and was named the holder of the Robert W. Wagstaff Distinguished Professor of Law in 1995. Professor Glicksman has practiced with law firms in DC and New Jersey before joining and while on leave from academia, focusing on environmental, energy, and administrative law issues. He has consulted on various environmental and natural resources law issues, including work for the Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation in Montreal, Canada.