Changing the climate of environmental law
After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the ensuing reorganization of the Department of the Interior, Frances Ulmer, a member of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, turned to Harvard Law School’s Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic. She asked the clinic to recommend best practices for regulating offshore drilling. “I leapt at the opportunity,” says Wendy B. Jacobs ’81, clinical professor of law and director of the clinic, who chooses complex projects that will challenge her students and provide opportunities to present their work to high-level officials — opportunities they would get nowhere else. “It was timely, and presented a novel and critically important set of issues.” In a single semester, three students under Jacobs’ direction analyzed 40 regulatory regimes and traveled to Washington, D.C., to present recommendations to the Department of the Interior and congressional staffers. They did...