Program on Law, the Environment and the Economy (PLEE)

From the frontiers of global warming regulation to the traditional problems of air and water pollution regulation, the formulation of environmental law and policy has too often been based not upon rigorous, objective analysis, but upon politicized contests between entrenched and increasingly partisan interest group advocates. One side pushes economic costs, the other environmental benefits. Within the American law school world, environmental law programs have come to focus not on the rigorous positive and normative analysis of environmental law and policy, but on training law students in how to litigate to expand the reach of the existing command and control regulatory structure.

A Dramatic Departure

Penn Law’s Program on Law, the Environment and the Economy (PLEE) differs dramatically from this existing American law school environmental law program model. PLEE’s goal is to encourage research and teaching that explores the positive and normative foundations of environmental law and policy, seeking both to explain the existing system and to provide a rigorous theoretical and empirical basis for a better way forward. Success in this objective requires a core faculty that is continually engaged in cutting edge interdisciplinary work on environmental and natural resource law and policy, and PLEE possesses just such a core faculty group. PLEE’s core faculty includes four tenured, chaired Professors, and virtually very one of our core faculty holds not only a law degree but an advanced degree in related disciplines ranging from economics to political science, history and philosophy. For virtually every issue that is central to the future of environmental and natural resource law -- whether it is international trade and environmental protection, cost-benefit analysis of environmental regulations, urban development, tradable pollution permits, or regulatory decentralization – PLEE faculty have contributed pathbreaking interdisciplinary scholarship. Complemented by a group of adjunct faculty who are among the nation’s leading practicing environmental attorneys, PLEE provides law students with a unique opportunity to not only gain the skills necessary to become effective advocates in today’s environmental and natural resource regulatory world, but to become leaders in devising new approaches to environmental laws and regulations, approaches that stress markets, decentralization of regulatory authority and private property.