NYU School of Law Student-Led Activites
In addition to the broad opportunities that NYU School of Law provides for classroom learning, clinical work, summer internships, and collaboration between students and faculty, the student community provides a wide variety of activities for students to broaden their exposure to environmental and land use law.
Real Estate and Urban Policy Forum
With generous support from two alumni of the Law School, Andrew Segal ‘92 and Justin Segal ‘96, NYU Law students have formed the Andrew and Justin Segal Real Estate Forum, which periodically sponsors events bringing back the school’s alumni and other guests to share their experiences in real estate. Recent guests include Leonard Boxer ‘63, Sheri Chromow ‘71, Henry Elghanayan ‘66, Jay Furman ‘71, Adam Glick, Jon Hanson, Raymond Harding ‘61, Jonathan Mechanic ‘77, Ronald Moelis (’82), Larry Nelson ‘55, Alan Pomerantz ‘68, Bruce Ratner, Charles Ratner ‘66, Jonathan Rose, Larry Silverstein, Martha Stark (’86), Robert Steinman (’97), Elise Wagner (’81), and William L. Zeckendorf. REUPF also sponsors career panels, student-faculty mixers, and social and recreational events for students interested in real estate, land use, community economic development or housing careers. To expose students to current debates, REUPF also sponsors panels on issues such as the Fifth Amendment “takings” cases pending before the Supreme Court.
Environmental Law Society
The Environmental Law Society (ELS) is the organization of the substantial community of law students interested in environmental and land use issues. It provides a forum for student-led environmental education, activism, and practice. A committed group of students organizes and participates in a range of activities, including a speaker series, seminars, career panels, legal projects, environmental advocacy, and social and recreational events.
In the past few years, ELS has hiked and camped in the Catskills, toured a waste management facility, reviewed the president’s nominees for the federal bench, and overseen a University-wide campaign to transform the University into a more environmentally efficient institution. ELS kicked off its 2003-04 programs by co-hosting an environmental justice panel discussion with BALSA (the African-American student group) and local professors and activists who are involved in the environmental justice movement. The group also holds a series of environmental brown-bag lunches as its monthly anchor event. It invites professors, leading environmental and land use law practitioners, and student note-writers to share their wisdom and engage in discussion with a regular “lunch bunch.” ELS also plans to bring back some of the most popular activities from years past: an overnight ELS-sponsored camping trip; a regional ELS happy hour (which has brought together students from Columbia, Cardozo, and Brooklyn law schools); daffodil planting in the Vanderbilt Hall garden; and career and student internship panels. The society has also initiated evening dinner discussions with faculty.
Environmental Law Journal
One of the nation’s leading environmental law journals, the Environmental Law Journal (ELJ), promotes and publishes high-quality scholarly debate about environmental and land use law and policy from a wide range of perspectives. Each year, ELJ hosts a colloquium (often co-sponsored by faculty) on an emerging topic of concern in environmental and land use law, and publishes the most important conference papers. Past colloquium topics have included Regulatory Expropriations in International Law; Ozone Non-Attainment in the Northeast: Moving Towards an Effective Cure; and the Impact of Title VI on Environmental Enforcement. Most recently, ELJ hosted a colloquium on Governing Transboundary Water Allocation in the 21st Century, exploring the challenge of governance of water quality and availability, which will be one of the leading concerns of environmental and land use law over the next century as clean freshwater resources have grown increasingly scarce.
ELJ’s staff is composed of about 50 second- and third-year law students, many of whom are dedicated to pursuing careers in environmental and land use law. The journal strongly encourages students to publish notes and features case comments and book reviews by students as well. Each year, the faculty advisers —— Professors Been, Stewart, and Wyman, and Dean Revesz —— encourage students on the journal to embark on a research paper that will be publishable as a student note by hosting a “note topic dessert party.” At the party, faculty and third-year students share suggestions about how to choose a good topic for a research project over apple crisp and other treats baked by the faculty.
Speakers and Other Law School Events
The speaker series organized the Real Estate and Urban Policy Forum and ELS are just two of many events that students and faculty at NYU School of Law organize each year. The Root-Tilden-Kern Monday Night Speaker Series has included advocates working in environmental justice. Students and faculty recently helped launch a new magazine on the future of cities called The Next American City, by sponsoring a forum titled “The Future of The City: Envisioning the Next New York.” The Institute for International Law and Justice, the Environmental Law Journal, and the Rainforest Foundation hosted a remarkable public meeting on the experiences of the Panará, an indigenous people of the Brazilian Amazon who successfully fought, through notable legal victories, the onslaughts of a development project that nearly destroyed them.
