Organization of the Course: The Syllabus
 

Class Meetings | Instructor and Office Hours | Required Text | Course Purposes and Learning Objectives | Student Preparation and Resources | Tentative Weekly Schedule of Topics | The Table of Deadlines

REGULAR CLASS MEETINGS

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:10 to 4:30 p.m., Room 204, Art Building.  

Despite the information in the Winter Term, 2003, Schedule and Directory, there are no discussion sections associated with the course, this year. 

INSTRUCTOR

Geoffrey Wandesforde-Smith, Department of Political Science and Department of Environmental Science and Policy. 

Office: 1263 Social Sciences. Regular Office Hours: Fridays, 1:00 p.m to 4:00 p.m., and by appointment.  Phone messages at 2-0966. Fax: (530) 752-8666. Mail: gawsmith@ucdavis.edu

TEXTBOOK

Required:  Thomas Schoenbaum, Ronald Rosenberg, and Holly Doremus, ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY LAW, 4th Edition (New York: The Foundation Press, 2002).

A WORD ABOUT PURPOSE AND LEARNING OBJECTIVES

This is the largest, most comprehensive, and most demanding undergraduate environmental law class offered at UC Davis. It is the only undergraduate law course supported by an extensive, well-developed, and properly maintained Web site.

As a General Education course, Environmental Law includes a substantial writing assignment.  This is designed in such a way that at the end of term even students with no previous law course will feel confident of their ability to find, read, understand, write about, and use in a limited but useful way a wide variety of legal materials relevant to the solution of an important resource management problem.  Providing students with this confidence is the chief learning objective of the course.

Other primary goals of the course are to give students a basic understanding of environmental law, to have them appreciate the constrained but important impact law has on environmental policy, and to impart skill and facility in the discovery and use of legal materials. 

Coverage of the entire spectrum of modern American environmental law is, of necessity, a secondary objective. In fact, Environmental Law is carefully selective in the topics chosen for treatment in the lectures and discussions. One criterion of selectivity is to avoid serious overlap with the few other undergraduate classes in law available at UC Davis, such as courses in land use planning law and the law of pesticides and toxics. From time to time, the specific focus of the course shifts, to keep it interesting and lively.

STUDENT PREPARATION AND RESOURCES

Every student must have a UC Davis computer account, complete with a valid password and a name-based UC Davis e-mail address.  New accounts may be opened on-line, in any campus computer lab.  A visit to the Information Technology Information Express service is strongly recommended, however, for continuing students who need to check the validity of a password.   IT Information Express is located on the ground floor of Shields Library, just down the hall from the Circulation Desk. The responsibility for checking that accounts and passwords are valid rests with each student and any problems should be dealt with, if necessary, before January 10th, 2003.

Students should use Microsoft Outlook, Eudora, or the e-mail features of their Web browsers for e-mail, rather than Pine.  Pine simply will not handle the large number of attachments that will be used in course correspondence.  Internet Explorer 6.0 is the preferred web browser.  

Because the use of computer and network resources for teaching and learning at UC Davis is diffusing and accelerating rapidly, students who plan to rely on campus labs to access the course Web and e-mail should schedule their computer use time carefully.  Inability to access the network will not be an acceptable excuse for late or incomplete work in this course.

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE OF TOPICS 

Notes:  (1) Make a habit of bringing your text book to class. 

(2) This tentative schedule must be read in conjunction with the Table of Deadlines, below, AND the list of reading assignments detailed in the reading file.

07 January. Introduction to the Course. 

09 January. Types of Law, Varieties of Courts, and the Basics of Legal Process. 

14 January. How to Brief a Case.  Agency Duties under NEPA.

16 January. Consideration and Alternatives in the Impact Assessment Process.  

21 January. Public Lands and Resource Management Law: Forests and Range.  

23 January. Public Lands and Resource Management Law: Parks, Wilderness, and Ecosystems.  

28 January. First Exam.  Introduction and Preliminary Discussion of the Final Hypothetical

30 January. Wildlife and Endangered Species Law: Development.  

04 February. Wildlife and Endangered Species Law: The ESA, Species, and Habitat Conservation Planning.  

06 February. Navigability and the Public Trust Doctrine.   

11 February. Second Exam.  Protection of Especially Critical Habitats and Ecosystems: The Law of Wetlands.  

13 February. Issues and Topics in State and Federal Water Law.  

18 February. Coastal Land Use Law, Local Development Review, and the Takings Doctrine.  

20 February. FIFRA and TOSCA: The Law of Pesticides and Toxics 

25 February. Third Exam.  Resource Conservation, Recovery, Recycling, and Reuse.  

27 February. The Superfund Law: CERCLA and SARA.  

04 March. Keeping Clean Air Clean: Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD).  

06 March. The Legal Regime for Water Quality Management: NPS and TMDLs   

11 March. Fourth (and last) Term Examination

13 March. Pre-Final Examination Review of the Hypothetical Problem.

17 March. Scheduled Final Examination Period, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.

22 March. End of Term

31 March. Grades available via RSVP, SISWEB, and Kiosks

TABLE OF DEADLINES, 2003

The LawCrawler | Environmental Law Net | NRDC | EDF | ELI | Earthjustice 

UC Davis Home | Professor's Home Page | gawsmith@ucdavis.edu

E-mail Archive for 2003

Last updated
May 22, 2007

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