Environmental law practicum highlighted at major forum

An innovative environmental law teaching (EL-T) practicum created by a Boston College Law School faculty member was the subject of a discussion at the environmental law field’s most prominent event.

BC Law Professor Emeritus Zygmunt Plater was among the panelists at the 42nd annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference  held in Eugene, Ore., who gave a presentation on EL-T, in which third-year law students co-teach an undergraduate course in environmental law. Plater, who created the seminar-based program in 1972 while at University of Michigan Law School and introduced it at BC Law in 1991, was joined by six law student instructors and an administrator currently participating in the EL-T program.

“Environmental law offers an astonishingly broad scope of relevant material,” said Plater, who credits his late Michigan Law colleague Joseph Sax for EL-T’s inspiration. “The course can include subject matter from pollution and nuclear issues to parks, wildlife, urban lead poisoning, racial and demographic environmental injustices, wetlands, and climate.  The field also covers virtually the entire legal spectrum—from tort law and other common law remedies—to statutory, regulatory, and constitutional issues of every shape and size in public and private law.”  

According to Plater, more than 250 BC Law students have co-taught the three-credit Environmental Law and Policy course to more than 3,500 BC undergraduates. In addition to the University of Michigan, undergraduates from the University of Tennessee, Wayne State University, Southern Maine University, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg College, and Maine’s St. Joseph College have benefited from the course that Plater characterized as “globally relevant and eagerly valued by the participating institutions.”

He noted that while each teaching team’s iteration of an EL-T course reflects their respective interests, emphases and themes, all course syllabi are required to provide students with an initial practical working understanding of common law torts—the foundation of environmental law—and a fundamental awareness of how legal mechanisms in courts and agencies receive and process the complicated facts brought into the legal process.  

Those who teach in the EL-T program, he said, gain “multidimensional, lifelong communication skills to effectively transmit complex facts and problem-solving analysis,” whether in the courtroom or any complex negotiation, and obtain “a deeper knowledge of environmental protection law and governance, because teaching the topic always requires much more extensive research and preparation than one would perform as a student.”

Participating EL-T undergraduates typically major in environmental, biology, chemistry, public health, business, engineering, or pre-law concentrations, explained Plater, who characterized the course as a “powerful entry into the challenges of living in a complex society, and the modern legal process within our environmental protection laws.”  

Royal Gardner J.D.’88, a professor at Stetson University College of Law—who participated virtually in the panel—said the program has been a benefit to him. “The preparation course helps me reflect more deeply on my own teaching. EL-T is a brilliant idea, and an excellent opportunity for law students to get more engaged with the material.”

“I fell in love with environmental law as a student in the teaching program, where I learned how citizens can reclaim their power, and join in the fight for environmental justice and protection,” said Goodwin Proctor LLP Associate Katherine Minorini ’20, J.D.’23. “Then, as an instructor, I helped inspire the next generation of environmental and public health advocates.”  

Plater noted that several U.S. law schools are currently considering adopting EL-T, as well as the University of Victoria Faculty of Law in British Columbia, and law schools in Egypt and Nigeria