LAW 777: Law and Business of Climate change (Formerly Private Environmental Law and Voluntary Overcompliance)
Much regulation of behavior that affects the environment occurs in the shadow of environmental law. Increasingly, “regulation” takes place outside the confines of the law itself through actions that are voluntary or are the product of extra-legal social norms. This course will examine three of the principal areas in which this private ordering of activity occurs: commercial transactions, informal social control and environmental management systems. The commercial transactions portion of the course will begin with a brief overview of the public environmental laws around which private parties negotiate. We will then review the impact of this public law construct on the environmental provisions included in merger and acquisition agreements, credit agreements and real property agreements. The commercial transactions portion of the course will include lecture and class discussion, along with several mock negotiations in small group and one-on-one settings. The second part of the course will examine the role of informal, extra-legal social control on corporate, government, and individual behaviors that affect the environment. Oftentimes, these extra-legal institutions lead to voluntary reductions in pollution beyond any legal requirement. The material will be reviewed through lecture, class discussion and business cases. A range of concepts will be examined, including the implications for environmental quality of social meaning, social norms, and patterns of behavior that may not arise from norms. The current and future roles of public agencies, private entities, and the media in influencing informal social control will be examined. The third part of the course will examine the growing role of environmental management systems in shaping the environmentally-relevant behavior of corporate and government entities. Domestic and international standards for environmental management will be discussed. The legal, policy and business implications of environmental management systems will be considered. Several case studies will be used to examine how firms have implemented environmental management systems in their organizations. [2 credit hours]
LAW 819: Private Environmental Law and Voluntary Overcompliance
This is the three-credit option for the above course. [3 credit hours]
