Hundreds Push HLS For New Law Profs.

Hundreds of Harvard Law School (HLS) students have signed a petition urging the school to hire professors who specialize in environmental law, an area that many say is ignored at Harvard.

HLS second-year Christopher T. Giovinazzo, who organized the petition, presented copies to University President Lawrence H. Summers and the entire Law School faculty yesterday.

He also presented the document, which has 350 student signatures, to incoming Dean of the Law School Elena Kagan.

Kagan told a meeting of law school student leaders yesterday that hiring faculty who specialize in environmental law is a priority, according to Giovinazzo.

Kagan could not be reached for comment.

The petition claims that “opportunities in environmental law at Harvard remain clearly sub-standard,” and that HLS has “fewer environmental classes than law schools half our size.”

There are no professors at HLS whose primary focus is environmental law, and the school offered only five classes in the field this year.

Stanford Law School, on the contrary, offered nine environmental law courses this year, and Yale Law School offered eight. Both of those schools are less than half the size of HLS.

The last Harvard faculty member with a primary focus on environmental law was Richard Stewart, who left for New York University (NYU) Law School in the late 1980s.

But professors said that since then, Harvard has made an effort to hire more environmental law faculty.

The school made an offer to environmental law expert Richard L. Revesz a few years ago, though Revesz declined and went on to become the dean of NYU Law School.

A crop of visiting professors with expertise in environmental law is slated to arrive at the Law School next year, and many are hoping this group will help to at least partially meet student demand for more opportunities in the field.

“Our program [is] weaker than we’d like it to be, but we have a very good set of visitors next year who will offer a considerable set of environmental law courses,” said Todd D. Rakoff, dean of the J.D. program and Byrne professor of administrative law.

And professors are hoping that a handful of these visiting faculty will plant roots in Cambridge.

“Inviting someone to be a visiting professor is a prelude to making someone an offer [for a permanent position],” said Caspersen Professor of Law Howell E. Jackson, who is also helping to organize a conference on environmental law next fall.

Jackson said he hoped the conference would “give students exposure to the leading people in the field.”

A Harsh Environment

Giovinazzo said he started the petition after an environmental law class he preregistered for was cancelled in January.

“I thought that rather than being frustrated with the state of the environmental program, I would work with fellow students to bring more productive efforts to the table,” Giovinazzo said.

Two environmental law courses—one on basic environmental law and the other on natural resources and the environment—were originally slated to be taught by HLS Professor Bruce L. Hay, who is informally “designated as the environmental law professor,” according to Giovinazzo.

But in January, the class on natural resources was cancelled and another professor—Suffolk Law School Professor Steven Ferrey—was called in to replace Hay for the basic environmental law course.

“The course was cancelled for personal reasons,” Rakoff said. “I believe that what was done was done in the best interest of our students.”

But students said they were disappointed when they heard that Hay was no longer teaching.

“Professor Hay has been the one person on the faculty who has been sticking up for the [environmental law] program,” Giovinazzo said.

Uncertainty is not new to environmental law courses, according to the petition.

“The environmental law courses are still arranged on a year-to-year basis with no certainty as to what classes will be offered and who will teach them,” the petition says.

Giovinazzo said that environmental law has never been strong at Harvard.

“There is a circular problem going on here. The program has been so weak for so long that there was a skepticism among the administration regarding student interest in environmental law courses,” Giovinazzo said.

Branching Out

Professors and students said that despite the lack of attention it receives at the law school, environmental law is an important interdisciplinary field that affects other disciplines such as constitutional and administrative law.

“This isn’t a liberal or conservative issue. Environmental law is a mainstream and critical field that is tied to everything from corporate mergers to civil rights,” said Giovinazzo.

Climenko Professor of Law Charles J. Ogletree said that he “empathized with student concerns” that environmental law should get more attention at Harvard.

“It’s an academic inquiry that overlaps with so many disciplines like constitutional law and property and civil rights,” he said.

While no new faculty have been hired yet, the future for environmental law looks bright, some students said.

“I am personally very excited about the progress the school has made, and I am really looking forward to working with Professor Kagan,” second-year law student James P. Gignac said.

Gignac just stepped down from the presidency of the Law School’s Environmental Law Society.

He added that HLS will offer seven classes in environmental law next year, two more than this year.

“I think that people coming out of Harvard Law School are likely to be leaders in many different fields, and I just hope that we produce leaders in the environmental field as well,” Gignac said.

—Staff writer Lauren A.E. Schuker can be reached at schuker@fas.harvard.edu.