HLS in Focus

I attended an event last week, but thought you might prefer to hear a student’s perspective on it. Alex Cambouris, a first-year student, gave me her take:

“One of my favorite things about Harvard is that the opportunities to eat a free meal abound. That said, when I cancelled my usual lunch plans to attend a discussion on constitutional perspectives on the current state of environmental law, I was not even expecting to be met with lunch. I was attending because my 1L elective this term is Environmental Law with Prof. Stephenson, and I thought the discussion would be a good supplement and update to my course work, but I was pleasantly surprised to encounter a buffet of ravioli, salad, and fruit.

“It seemed the joint organizers of the event, the American Constitution Society and the Environmental Law Society, were also pleasantly surprised because they probably should have reserved a larger room. There was barely enough space in the conference room to accommodate all the students who were either very interested in environmental law or who had accurately anticipated another free lunch.

“The two lunchtime guests, Rob Verchick and Richard Lazarus, were both exceptional speakers. After a brief introduction by Prof. Jody Freeman, one of the latest additions to the HLS faculty, Prof. Verchick began by discussing how one of the traditional sources of Congress’s authority to protect the environment, the Commerce Clause, has been eroded by recent Supreme Court decisions. He concluded by noting that while the current court seems disposed toward limiting the scope of the Commerce Clause, the recent decision in Raich v. Ashcroft, which purports to be about regulating medical marijuana, leaves the door open for environmental activists because it interprets Congress’s Commerce Clause authority very broadly, categorically in fact.

“Prof. Lazarus then picked up where Prof. Verchick left off and spoke about his expectations of the Roberts Court in contrast to the disposition of the Rhenquist Court with respect to environmental protection. Prof. Lazarus used excerpts from oral argument transcripts to illustrate the concerns of the particular justices and provided his insights about how these concerns might play out in future cases.

“As a final note, Prof. Freeman introduced the new t-shirts for the Environmental law society which feature a white toad on a light-blue background with the caption “Fighting Haplessness” below it. The t-shirt refers to Judge Roberts’s now famous dissent in Rancho Viejo v. Norton, where he questioned whether the long arm of the Commerce Clause could extend to regulate ‘the taking of a hapless toad that, for reasons of its own, lives its entire life in California…’ under the Endangered Species Act. After presenting the t-shirts to each of the speakers, Prof. Freeman requested one more for Prof. Lazarus because he thought the Chief Justice would be amused by it.”