Environmental Law
Curriculum
Course Offerings
The University of Iowa College of Law offers two three-credit courses in the field of environmental law. The Environmental Law course provides an introduction to the role of the American legal system in addressing problems of environmental disruption, with special emphasis on air, water, and hazardous waste pollution. The International Environmental Law course introduces students to the international legal system by considering the laws and institutions that have been developed by the international community to deal with international environmental problems, including problems relating to the atmosphere (acid rain, ozone depletion, radioactive fallout, climate change); the hydrosphere (land-based sea pollution, sea-based vessel pollution, transboundary groundwater diversion); the lithosphere (hazardous waste disposal, toxic pollutants, desertification); and the biosphere (driftnet fishing, endangered elephants, loss of tropical rainforests).
Iowa Faculty in Environmental Law
The Iowa Law faculty who teach and research in environmental law include Professors Jonathan Carlson and John-Mark Stensvaag.
Basic Resources
Environmental law is a vast discipline, regulated through an extraordinary variety of federal, state, tribal, and international statutes, regulations, treaties, conventions, and judicial decisions. Helpful gateways to the federal agencies administering these laws include the following:
Laws and Regulations administered by the United States Environmental Protection Agency
United States Department of Interior
United States Coast Guard (a division of the United States Department of Homeland Security)
United States Army Corps of Engineers
Perhaps the single most helpful gateway to the universe of federal, state, tribal, and international environmental laws is the
Environmental Law Net.