Titled “Administrative Law in the 21st Century,” Stewart’s lecture traced the evolution of administrative regulation in the United States, outlined recent efforts to overcome “administrative fatigue,” and concluded with a look at the emerging international aspects of administrative law.

The administrative state is rooted in common law, and grew up during the industrialization of the 19th century through the managerialism of the New Deal. In the late 20th century, the administrative state was democratized in reaction to the rise of consumer activism, and was later adapted to its current form by the Reagan Administration, which focused on costs and benefits. Stewart said he sees this current form as an amalgam of four historical approaches to public regulation.

According to Stewart, contemporary U.S. administrative law is a combination of tort law in the form of Section 1983 and Bivens actions, adjudicatory enforcement, judicially-supervised interest group mediation, and analytic focus on efficiency. Stewart went on to describe the phenomenon that he calls “administrative fatigue.”

“Americans demand higher and higher levels of regulatory protection, yet regulatory administrative government seems less and less capable of providing such protection in an efficient and effective manner,” he said.

The regulatory process is slow and unresponsive, Stewart said, because the federal government is reliant on commandand- control methods of regulation in which agencies attempt to govern millions through rule-making. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the two dominant approaches to rule-making — interest group representation and cost-benefit analyses — are themselves painstakingly slow and cumbersome.

To help relieve the problem of administrative fatigue, two new methods for regulatory reform have emerged: governmentstakeholder network structures and economic incentive systems, the latter of which is favored by Stewart. Under a governmentstakeholder network structure, parties to the process overcome the traditional constraints of a top-down approach by forming partnerships across agency lines and between agencies, industry representatives, private firms, and public organizations. Under the economic incentive method, government agencies attempt to channel behavior through the use of market mechanisms like tradable pollution permits and environmental taxes.

U.S. administrative law will continue to evolve toward a more diversified and precisely analytical review that is less costly and time-consuming, according to Stewart. He sees in this evolution a greater role for economic incentive measures, and said that new networks should be created to respond to new regulatory options. Stewart said that regulatory bodies must devise new approaches, which will increasingly move away from judicial solutions, to mediate conflicts and ensure accountability and compliance. Moreover, as transnational regulatory agreements become more common, U.S. administrative law will become increasingly international.

Stewart’s new professorship and the lecture he delivered are named for John Sexton, president of New York University and former dean of NYU School of Law. Sexton is honored for his extraordinary service to the Law School since he joined as a professor in 1981, and went on to serve as dean from 1988 to 2002. Sexton is known for being generous with hugs, which infused all the talk of regulation with an affectionate spirit.

The idea for a professorship to honor Sexton crystallized more than 10 years ago with six forward-looking Law School alumni: Thomas Brome (’67), Ciro Gamboni (’65), Martin Lewis (’51), Frank Morison (’67), Stuart Schlesinger (’67), and Paul Tagliabue (’65). Each pledged equal funding for a professorship to be renamed for Sexton when he left the deanship of the Law School. Created in 1993, the professorship initially was known as the Emily Kempin Professorship, commemorating the first woman to attend regular law classes at NYU. Kempin also conducted the first women’s law class here in 1890. The professorship will continue to embody the commitment to the community that was the hallmark of Sexton’s years at NYU School of Law.

This Law School offers an unparalleled opportunity for students to work with professors on matters of tremendous importance. As a first-year student, I was fortunate to be able to assist Professor (now Dean) Richard Revesz in writing an amicus brief for a consortium of environmental advocacy organizations in the U.S. Supreme Court case of American Trucking Associations v. E.P.A. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to hear the case primarily because the D.C. Circuit, in overturning the Environmental Protection Agency’s 1997 Clean Air Act rule-making, had revived the nondelegation doctrine for the first time in more than 60 years. If the D.C. Circuit’s ruling had been affirmed, it would have had devastating consequences for all manner of environmental, health, and safety regulations. The chance to work on an amicus brief in a Supreme Court case, let alone one of such importance, is one few law schools can offer their students. Moreover, although my role was primarily that of a research assistant, Professor Revesz treated me as a collaborator, discussing strategic and tactical decisions with me and even including portions of my research memos in the final brief. I came to NYU School of Law knowing that I wanted to pursue a career in environmental litigation, and even as a student I felt that my career had already begun.

Following the end of my judicial clerkship in August 2003, I began a two-year fellowship in environmental litigation with the Institute for Public Representation (IPR) at the Georgetown University Law Center. As an IPR fellow, I represent clients of Georgetown’s Environmental Litigation Clinic in state and federal court and administrative bodies on a wide range of environmental issues. This is exactly the kind of work I dreamed about doing before I came to the Law School, and the education I received at NYU School of Law made it possible.

Vickie Patton (’90)

When the U.S. Supreme Court granted review of the most important Clean Air Act controversy in a generation, Environmental Defense (formerly Environmental Defense Fund) turned to Dean Revesz. Despite a fully committed summer of academic activities, the dean filed not one but two amici curiae briefs in two closely related cases before the high court.The briefs were submitted on behalf of Environmental Defense and a coalition of public health and environmental organizations. In a unanimous opinion, the Court affirmed the integrity of the Clean Air Act and reversed a D.C. Circuit opinion that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acted unconstitutionally in establishing national health-based air-quality standards protecting millions of Americans.

It was not surprising that we turned to Dean Revesz when the Clean Air Act was hanging law and policy, I had timidly knocked on his door to ask whether he would be my faculty adviser on an environmental law paper. And, it was the dean’s Environmental Law course, which concentrated on the Clean Air Act, that sparked my interest in clean air issues. Now, while spearheading Environmental Defense’s national and regional clean air programs, I routinely turn to NYU School of Law professors, like Professor Stewart and Dean Revesz, for guidance. I continue to knock because I know that NYU School of Law is a vibrant center of the nation’s leading environmental law scholars, and because I am certain that the dean will help even the most timid law student interested in an environmental law career.

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.

The Globalization and Its Discontents Colloquium was one of the more stimulating classes I took at NYU School of Law. It offered me a further valuable perspective on the work I had been doing on environmental health and safety regulation and trade/competition. It provided a unique opportunity to discuss with academics their leading work on the implications of globalization. Whether their work was at a general level or on a specific subject, discussions were stimulating and relevant as Professors Kingsbury and Stewart focused the seminar on drawing parallels with and implications for students’ work. The student work also covered a broad range of subjects and discussions allowed for cross-referencing of each other’s work and that of the visiting academics.

Robert Yezerski (LL.B. ’03, University of Sydney)

The great achievement of the Globalization and Its Discontents Colloquium is that it explores the common challenges that the phenomenon of globalization poses for regulatory fields as diverse as genetically modified foods, competition law, and international criminal law. The course focuses heavily on institutional design and explores the ways in which regulation may be achieved beyond the ordinary channels of international law and politics. Perhaps the best aspect of the colloquium is that it brings together a range of experts (from both inside and outside the Law School), exposing students to the leading scholarship in a diverse range of fields.

Students were required to prepare reaction papers to the various speakers, and most speakers spent considerable time discussing these responses during their presentations. This meant that students were able to engage the guest speakers directly, voicing their own perspectives, opinions, and objections. The overall experience of the colloquium was therefore one of collaboration and debate, rather than mere exposition. My colloquium paper proposed development of an international system of criminal liability for oil-tanker owners who violate environmental regulatory requirements.

Taking a course that was jointly offered in the Wagner School of Public Service and NYU School of Law was one of the most interesting experiences of my Law School career. It was a unique opportunity to examine relevant and current problems confronted in the urban setting from a variety of viewpoints. Law students often become used to confronting issues from an exclusively legal perspective. By taking a course with students in the Wagner School, we were able to go beyond a simple legal analysis and study the causes of urban problems and the results of legal responses to those problems from different methodological perspectives and through the lens of different disciplines. Such a breadth of perspective was also brought to the Environmental Law Journal’s annual colloquium last spring, which focused on environmental impact review, the subject of a class being offered in the Wagner School. Several Wagner students attended the colloquium and were able to call attention to some of the broader policy concerns raised by such laws and regulations.

Ashley Miller (’04)

As a student interested in both law and urban planning, I knew right away that the Colloquium on the Law, Economics, and Politics of Urban Affairs was a course I wanted to take, but even with high expectations I was happily surprised. The participation of both law and planning students added a new dimension to the discussion, which I found useful in addressing such inherently interdisciplinary topics. It was inspiring to interact with scholars on their own work in progress, especially on such current and difficult issues as exclusionary suburban zoning, common-interest communities, and gentrification in New York City. The colloquium gave me a new appreciation for the complexity of urban issues, and a sense of the technical challenges of basing policy decisions on empirical work. The colloquium also highlighted the atmosphere of engagement and innovation at the Law School, as well as the benefits of being in New York City. New York gives students the ability to observe firsthand urban planning issues in context, as well as access to top-notch scholars working in the field.

Hannah Richman (Wagner ’03)

The best aspect of the Colloquium on the Law, Economics, and Politics of Urban Affairs was the collaboration between top-notch professors from the Wagner School and the Law School. Their complementary approaches to the evaluation of issues were stimulating. The process of formulating critical questions for the guest speakers, and thereafter preparing written critical evaluations of their answers, cultivated skills essential for graduates from both schools. The professors’ high standards and expectations also made the colloquium a particularly challenging and motivating course and experience. The Law School and the Wagner School exist in relative isolation from each other, but this colloquium afforded professors and students the opportunity to collaborate in a positive and intellectually stimulating environment.

Erica Field, Ph.D. candidate in the Economics Department at Princeton University, presented “Entitled to Work: Urban Property Rights and Labor Supply in Peru,” a study of how land titling programs in Peru affected labor market participation, at the Colloquium on Law, Economics, and Politics. Field’s study was later featured in an article in the New York Times.

Professor Clayton Gillette of NYU School of Law presented “The Locality’s Relationship with the State:The Scope of Local Autonomy” at the Colloquium on Law, Economics, and Politics.

Keith Maskus from the World Bank presented “Problems Patents Pose for Developing Countries” at the Colloquium on Innovation Policy.

As a student interested in environmental law, but often humbled by the odious “Socratic Method,” I knew that participating in the Law School’s Environmental Law Clinic at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) was necessary to revive my interest in the law after that tortuous first year. I was, for the first time in my legal career, right on the mark. The clinic put me where the action was: right in the middle of a lawsuit.

From the day the clinic started to the day it finished, I was heavily involved in a suit that NRDC brought against the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) challenging DOE’s rollback of recently promulgated appliance efficiency standards. The standards, designed to reduce the perkilowatt- hour energy consumption of air conditioners and heaters, and promulgated at the end of the Clinton administration, were suspended and then rescinded by the Bush administration. NRDC brought the lawsuit because the statute under which the standards were created provides that the standards can never be weakened, and because the rollback occurred without following the required public “notice and comment” procedures.

My involvement was surprisingly large, as I was immediately thrown into the thick of things. I conducted research in support of, and edited and revised large portions of, two appellate briefs submitted to the Second Circuit. Though I was completely enthralled by my Civil Procedure course, there is just no substitute for the real-world experience of seeing what a proper pleading and brief looks like.

As an aspiring environmental lawyer, I cannot say enough about my participation in the Environmental Law Clinic — it has been my most rewarding experience in Law School thus far, even surpassing the beloved Civil Procedure. But who knows? Maybe the International Environmental Law Clinic will top it.

Anika Singh (’04)

At NRDC, I worked on a lawsuit to enforce lead abatement laws and regulations, and helped to draft legislation to provide tax credits for energy-efficient and transit-accessible developments in New Jersey. I took the clinic because of my interest in land use and development issues, and was pleased to pursue that interest in the clinic projects. It was exciting to work on legislation that finally, last May, was introduced in the New Jersey state legislature.Working on tax credit legislation definitely informed my understanding of tax incentives and preferences while I was taking Income Tax last semester. The clinic seminars were extremely educational, with topics varying from air-conditioner efficiency to preserving the Everglades. Our discussions of landmarks preservation and environmentally-friendly economic development especially enhanced my understanding of how environmental law affects the types of issues — affordable housing and economic development — that I’m interested in.

Emily Willits (’03)

I worked with attorneys in NRDC’s Urban Program on projects aimed at protecting the cleanliness of New York City’s water supply. The most important lesson I learned at NRDC is that effective environmental advocacy requires equal attention to legal strategy, policy planning, and public relations. On any given visit to NRDC, I could expect to research a complicated legal issue, participate in a strategy session for a town hall meeting, or review a press release relating to one of my assignments. The work was fast-paced and varied, and each component was critical.

The clinic provided an exciting opportunity to learn about the inner workings of one of the most highly regarded environmental action organizations in the world. Each week our seminar featured a guest visitor, either from within NRDC or from another environmental organization or government agency. I left the clinic with an understanding of environmental issues that I had not thought about before, not to mention a binder full of sample legal briefs and memoranda written by some of the best environmental lawyers in the country. I still receive occasional updates about the projects I worked on at the clinic — just last spring, I attended a hearing in Albany for a case that I worked on in Fall 2002.

My participation in the International Environmental Law Clinic was an extremely important part of my third year of Law School in that I was able to revive and greatly advance several strands of research I had begun in earlier courses and internships, and unite them in a single research paper that I hope will now be used by other activists and researchers in the field.

For my project, I chose to develop a comparative study on the international regulation of the use of antibiotics and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the agricultural industry. This turned out to be an exciting project because national and international policy in these areas was in constant flux and even became considered a political stake in the controversy surrounding the E.U.’s involvement in the U.S.-Iraq conflict. Because of the dual aims of the project, I was working for both Dr. Becky Goldburg at Environmental Defense, an environmental non-governmental organization headquartered in New York, and Professor Stewart’s GMO research project at NYU School of Law.

Through the clinic work, I learned more about research methods and the dynamics of modern international policy than I had in any previous courses or clinic work. My final paper went beyond mere legal research and ultimately incorporated scientific debates, ethical concerns, trade and economic issues in developing countries, and the clash of political and free trade principles of the developed nations — as well as the effects and interplay of these facts in influencing national policies on antibiotic use and GMOs.

Charles Olson (’03)

This clinic provided an exciting opportunity to work with the World Resources Institute (WRI) on a project designed to promote grassroots-driven environmental progress in the developing world. Through “The Access Initiative,”WRI partnered with the U.N. Development Programme and numerous governments to promote access to environmental information, participation in environmental decision-making, and access to environmental justice. My research focused on developing indicators to rate countries in terms of practical access by citizens to courts or other tribunals to protect environmental interests — the “law in action,” not just the “law on the books.”

To understand the practical barriers to access to justice in developing countries, I not only researched and reviewed the published literature, but also interviewed many students and members of the Law School community with personal experience litigating in the developing world. I was struck by their willingness to help identify practical impediments to access to justice through their native legal systems and their passion for addressing the difficulties that I was researching.The resulting paper helped produce a set of analytical tools and indicators that WRI and governments of developing nations can use to monitor and promote access to justice and, more generally, facilitate local environmental advocacy.

Andrew Wolman (’03)

For my project, I worked with Alon Tal, director of Israel’s Arava Institute of Environmental Studies. I did a comparative study of water pollution effluent trading schemes around the world for a project exploring whether such schemes can be effectively implemented in Israel. For me, this was a great opportunity to learn more about the use of economic incentives in environmental regulation under the tutelage of Professor Stewart, one of the world’s foremost experts in the field. One clinic highlight was getting together with the other clinic students from all around the world at Professor Stewart’s house, where we talked about our projects and international environmental law in general.

For Spring 2003, I went to Madrid for an internship with the International Institute for Law and the Environment, one of Spain’s leading environmental law centers. The institute director, Ana Barreira (LL.M. ’96), is an alumna of the International Environmental Law Clinic. The internship was extremely valuable, both to learn environmental law from a European perspective and to have a firsthand view of environmental NGO operations. I worked on a wide variety of projects, from researching water allocation rights along the India-Nepal border to writing a conference proposal on the environmental issues connected to E.U. enlargement to writing a report on the use of conservation easements in Latin America. The experiences provided practical as well as substantive education in international environmental law.

This year, five of the 25 Skadden Fellows are alumni of NYU School of Law. These outstanding individuals are listed below with the organization with which they will be working.

Oliver Chase (’03)
The Legal Aid Society Community Law Offices, New York, NY

Claudia Flores (’02)
Main Street Legal Services, Flushing, NY

Salvatore Gogliormella (’02)
Lawyers Alliance for New York, New York, NY

Sandra Park (’02)
The Legal Aid Society, Bronx Neighborhood Office Bronx, New York

Claudia Wilner (’02)
Urban Justice Center, New York, NY