Administrative and Regulatory State
Student Perspectives
Printer Friendly VersionWarren Braunig (’05)
For me, Professor Stewart’s Administrative and Regulatory State class provided a valuable link between the scholarly and sometimes abstract elements of the first-year curriculum and the real world in which policy is created, manipulated, and adjudicated. Exposure to this material during my first year was particularly important for two reasons. First, as someone who came to the Law School somewhat interested in environmental and administrative law, the class enabled me to dip my toe into those bodies of law, determine that I indeed wanted them to be the focus of my Law School career, and shape my second-year class choices appropriately. Second, having a solid foundation in administrative law was a competitive advantage for finding the summer job of my choice and has allowed me to be more efficient and successful on the job this past summer.
The Administrative and Regulatory State class didn’t just turn me on to environmental and administrative law, it turned me on to the practice of law and the power that lawyers have to effect real change.
Alexandra Knight (’05)
With a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering and an interest in environmental law, I knew from the start that I wanted to take the environmental section of the Administrative and Regulatory State course. Yet I did not realize that having the course on my transcript would give me such an advantage when applying to environmental law positions for the summer. Employers were very impressed that as a first-year student I had already learned both the fundamentals of administrative law and been introduced to the intricacies of important environmental regulation like the Clean Air Act.
This past summer, I worked for an environmental law organization in Mexico. The fundamentals of the U.S. environmental regulatory scheme that the Administrative and Regulatory State course provided me proved to be quite applicable to my work because many Mexican environmental norms are taken directly from U.S. regulations. The course also introduced us to international environmental norms like the precautionary principle embodied in the Rio Declaration, which I used to research human rights and environmental violations stemming from a chemical plant explosion in Veracruz. Taking the course solidified my decision to pursue a career in environmental law and offered critical insight into the wide range of economic and political considerations involved in the legislative and rule-making process that I could not have received from other traditional first-year private law classes.
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