Fifty Years of Environmental and Energy Law

About the GW Law Environmental and Energy Program

In 1970, GW Law assumed a leadership role in modern environmental law teaching, in significant part due to a $250,000 grant from the Ford Foundation that brought Arnold Reitze to GW and allowed the school to significantly expand its environmental law offerings. Throughout the past 50 years, GW Law has been an innovator in environmental legal education by developing one of the first Environmental Law master’s degree (LLM programs), by developing a unique curriculum that has trained hundreds of military lawyers in environmental law through the LLM program, by developing one of the most extensive environmental law curricula in the country, and by creating the Sustainable Energy Initiative that focuses on the intersections between energy and environmental law. Today, GW Law counts thousands of environmental and energy law practitioners among its alumni and new law students, who come to GW from across the country and the world, contribute to the tradition by actively participating in environmental and energy law groups and extracurricular activities

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Anniversary Events

The Environmental and Energy program is hosting several events to celebrate 50 years of environmental law at GW. Click the events tab below to read more about the upcoming events. A livestream will also be available during each event.

Event Videos

Conference on Public Lands and Energy Transitions

More Events

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Fundraising

The GW Environment and Energy Law Program has long been one of the leading programs in the country.  Each year almost 100 new students come to the School with an express interest in environmental or energy law.  During our 50^th anniversary year, we will feature programming focused on the future of environmental law beginning with a lecture by former EPA Administrator William Reilly on October 30. More exciting events are underway from now to October 2020 - stay tuned.

To maintain and build on our leadership role and to serve the many students interested in environmental and energy law at GW we need your support.  In recognition of the 50^th anniversary of the GW Environmental and Energy Law Program we are launching a year-long, 50^th anniversary fundraising effort to provide scholarship support to students interested in the public interest practice of environmental or energy law and to provide funding for innovative new programming that will allow GW to build on its leadership role in environmental and energy law education.  Please consider making a donation this year to the GW Environment and Energy Law Program by designating your gift to the Environmental and Energy Law Futures Fund. 

Donate

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Timeline

1970

• Founded in 1970 as one of the first environmental law programs in the country thanks to a generous grant of $250,000 by the Ford Foundation
• Created one of the first environmental law LLM programs in the United States

1974

• Almost 800 students are enrolled in the environmental law survey course and over 1,700 enrolled in environmental courses

Late 1970s

• Offered 11 courses in environmental law

1980s

• Program expanded to include energy law
• Added LLM sub-specialties in international environmental law and environmental and procurement law

1994

• Published the first The Environmental Lawyer in collaboration with the American Bar Association, which ran until 2013

2009

• Added a new LLM sub-specialty in energy and environmental law
• Held the first J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Environmental Law Symposium, which is held annually and has attracted more than 200 speakers to the law school

2010

• Launched the Journal of Energy and Environmental Law
• Awarded the Distinguished Achievement in Environmental Law and Policy by the American Bar Association Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources

2013

• Created the Sustainable Energy Initiative in 2013 that focuses on the transition occurring in the electricity industry including work on microgrids, post-disaster rebuilding, and electric vehicles

2019

• Co-organizer with the Environmental Law Institute of a project on “Reimagining Environmental and Natural Resources Law: 2020 and Beyond” designed to examine changes that need to be made in environmental law to deal with critical environmental and natural resource issues as we enter the second half-century of the modern environmental era.

 

 

By the numbers

Learn more about the Environmental and Energy Law Program