Position: Earthjustice, Litigation, Associate Attorney (Deadline: rolling, Seattle, WA)

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http://earthjustice.org/about/jobs/34201/associate-attorney

ASSOCIATE ATTORNEY

LOCATION:

Seattle, WA

DEPARTMENT:  Litigation

The Northwest Office of Earthjustice is seeking applicants for an Associate Attorney to begin work in the fall of 2016 or sooner.

The Northwest Office opened in 1987 to enable Earthjustice to take a more active role in preserving the unique natural resources and environment of the Pacific Northwest.  Since that time, the Northwest office has undertaken campaigns to protect old growth forests, promote salmon recovery, improve water quality, protect Puget Sound and the communities that depend on it, stop coal-fired power plants, protect farmworkers and their families from pesticides, and respond to climate change, among other things.

Although the primary focus of the Northwest office is representing environmental and citizens’ groups in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, we often take cases with national and international scope.  For example, the Northwest office is involved in cases seeking to stop coal exports to Asia and transport of crude oil to ports along the entire west coast as part of its effort to reduce reliance on dirty fossil fuels. We also have led nationwide litigation to protect 58.5 million acres of undeveloped, roadless areas on our National Forests.  We frequently work in close partnership with Native American Tribes and fence-line communities.

Our office is located in the heart of downtown Seattle near the federal and state courthouses, the waterfront, and historic Pioneer Square.  Our goal is to produce the highest quality legal work in a diverse, inclusive, supportive, and collegial environment.  The Northwest Office has nine attorneys, including this position.

RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Work closely with Staff Attorneys and clients to investigate, develop, and prosecute cases.
  • Participate in the full range of tasks involved in complex litigation, including factual investigation, legal research, discovery, briefing, witness preparation, and oral advocacy.
  • As an Associate Attorney gains experience, typically her or his case load will include both cases for which he or she has primary responsibility under the supervision of a Staff Attorney, and cases on which he or she works in a supporting role with Staff Attorneys.

The Associate Attorney program comprises a two-year position with a possible extension for a third year. This program is designed to help attorneys develop into thoughtful, professional, and effective advocates skilled in the various phases of public interest litigation.  Many Associates have gone on to other positions within Earthjustice or with other public interest organizations.

QUALIFICATIONS

  • Law school graduate by fall of 2016 admitted to, or willing to apply for admission to, the Washington State Bar.
  • Excellent research, analytic, writing and communication skills.
  • Strong work ethic, initiative, sound yet creative judgment.
  • Strong desire to fight for the right of all to a healthy environment.
  • Demonstrates an awareness and sensitivity to the needs and concerns of individuals from diverse cultures, backgrounds and orientations.
  • Contributes to the creation of a diverse, equitable and inclusive work culture that encourages and celebrates differences.
  • Commitment to public interest work and a passion for the role of Earthjustice and its mission.

We offer a mission- and employee-focused work environment and a competitive compensation package, including excellent benefits.  Earthjustice is an equal opportunity employer and highly values diversity.

TO APPLY

Interested candidates should submit a:

  • Resume.
  • One or two page cover letter that addresses (1) why you are drawn to Earthjustice’s mission; and/or, (2) any experiences you have working with people or communities from backgrounds that differ from your own or with those who have been disproportionately affected by environmental harms.
  • Writing sample, preferably a legal brief or memorandum that primarily reflects your work.
  • Law school transcript.
  • List of three references.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position is filled.  We expect to fill the position by fall of 2016 or sooner depending upon applicant availability.

Please reach out to jobs@earthjustice.org if you are having technical difficulties submitting your application. No phone calls, drop-ins, or hard copies.

Position: Center for International Environmental Law, Environmental Health Program, Staff Attorney (Deadline: rolling, Washington, DC)

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http://www.ciel.org/about-us/jobs/ciel-vacancy-announcement-staff-attorney-environmental-health-program/

CIEL Vacancy Announcement: Staff Attorney for the Environmental Health Program

May 2016

The Center for International Environmental Law is seeking an experienced legal advocate and policy analyst to become CIEL’s next attorney for its Environmental Health Program (EH). This is a great opportunity for an experienced professional and energetic individual passionate about cutting edge international legal work advocating for a toxic free future.

For more than 25 years, CIEL has used the power of law to protect the environment, promote human rights, and ensure a just and sustainable society. CIEL’s dynamic team of international attorneys and experts work with global partners in collaborative ways to tackle some of the most interesting and challenging issues facing people and the planet.

CIEL has built a reputation as one of the leading organizations developing legal analysis and proposals for the use of precautionary approaches for the safe management of chemicals and waste. The Environmental Health Program works to achieve a toxics-free future through negotiation and implementation of new international instruments; changing public policy and corporate practices; advocating for the precautionary approach; and increasing awareness of new forms of chemicals like endocrine disrupting chemicals and nanomaterials, while building strong and diverse coalitions. In the past few years, CIEL has also spearheaded work highlighting the risks of trade agreements (in particular the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP) to chemicals regulations and environmental health,

The EH attorney position requires: knowledge and practical experience of international chemicals and waste regulations; experience with trade issues; demonstrated ability to do complex legal and policy analysis; effective communication with diverse stakeholders and public speaking skills; and extensive experience working in collaborative processes.

The position can be based in Washington, D.C., or Geneva (Switzerland) and requires periodic international travel. A complete position description is available here. Salary is commensurate with experience.

To Apply: Please send a resume, cover letter, two references, and a writing sample to info@ciel.org (include “Environmental Health Attorney Position” in subject line). The writing sample should represent the applicant’s own, unedited writing.

Application Deadline: Accepted on a rolling basis. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for interviews. Ideal start date for this position is September 2016.

CIEL is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and is an equal opportunity employer offering an informal, friendly, and fun work environment with excellent benefits.

Position: Pace Law School, Haub Transactional Food and Beverage Law Clinic, Director/Managing Attorney (Deadline: June 30, White Plains, NY)

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Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University Seeks Transactional Food and Beverage Law Clinic Director

Introduction

The Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University seeks to hire a Director for its new Transactional Food and Beverage Law Clinic, to start September 1, 2016.  This new clinic is part of a collaboration between the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to serve the direct legal service needs of food justice organizations, farmers, and food entrepreneurs in the greater New York region by increasing capacity of the legal community to meet those needs through education of law students and training of lawyers.

Legal services are vital to empower transitions to a more just and sustainable food system. In order to implement innovative practices, farmers, food and beverage entrepreneurs, and other activists must navigate a complicated legal landscape governing everything from food labels to estate planning.  The overall Pace-NRDC Food Law Initiative seeks both to provide some of these necessary to legal services and to train a larger community of lawyers to understand food, beverage, and agriculture issues.

Job Description

The Director/Managing Attorney of the Haub Transactional Food and Beverage Law Clinic will serve as lead attorney on all clinic projects.  He/she will work with Professor Margot Pollans, the Food Law Initiative Faculty Director, to identify clinic clients and overall clinic development.  The managing attorney will also work with NRDC and other key partners on appropriate clinic projects.  During the academic year, the managing attorney will supervise clinic students and will co-teach a weekly clinic seminar.  The managing attorney will take the lead in developing the curriculum for the clinic seminar.  The managing attorney will also assist with fundraising efforts and participate in teaching and planning for Food Law Initiative workshop programs.

Haub Transactional Food and Beverage Law Clinic

The clinic’s primary mission is to facilitate development of a socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable regional food system by providing direct legal services to individuals and organizations who seek to reform how we grow, distribute, purchase, and dispose of food.  The clinic will seek to achieve its mission by serving small- and medium-sized farmers implementing innovative and sustainable farming practices, mission-oriented food entrepreneurs, and food justice non-profit organizations.  Areas of critical need include access to land, access to capital, farm ownership succession and estate planning, eligibility for federal and state programs and benefits, and compliance with federal, state, and local regulatory law (including food safety law, labeling requirements, labor law, and zoning).  This mission-driven clinic will serve some of the currently unmet legal needs of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regional food systems while also providing Pace law students with a unique opportunity for hands on transactional law experience in a growing area of law.

Pace-NRDC Food Law Initiative

As noted, the overall goal of the Pace-NRDC Food Law Initiative is to address the significantly direct legal service needs of food justice organizations, farmers, and food entrepreneurs in the greater New York region. In addition to the new Clinic, there are three other key components of the Initiative. First, each semester a Pace student will work at NRDC on regional food—and the first extern started in January 2016. Second, the initiative will also host an annual lecture focusing on critical food law topics; the first annual lecture was held on January 27, 2016.  And third, there will be a Workshop Series for law students and lawyers to build the capacity of the legal community to deal with food and agriculture issues.  For more information, seehttp://www.law.pace.edu/pace-nrdc-food-law-initiative.

For almost four decades, the Haub Environmental Law Program has provided an internationally acclaimed environmental legal education. Its dedicated faculty have been pioneers in developing and implementing environmental law and continue to serve as national and world leaders in the field. Its alumni are at work in law firms, government agencies, corporations, nonprofit organizations, and universities across the country and around the world. In recent years, the law school has expanded the environmental program to include food law and has hired two new full time faculty who teach and write in the area.  The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 2 million members and online activists. Since 1970, its lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world’s natural resources, public health, and the environment.  NRDC is committed to fixing the broken national food system and rebuilding strong, equitable, and sustainable regional food systems.

Qualifications

  • 3+ years transactional legal experience
  • New York State bar admission (or admission in an another state and willingness to sit for the New York bar at the first opportunity after hiring)
  • demonstrated fundraising ability
  • excellent analytical and writing skills and demonstrated success in advocacy and client management
  • significant experience working with food system issues and a commitment to the mission of the Food Law Initiative
  • teaching (or other supervisory) experience

Other Information

  • Start date: September 1, 2016
  • Position duration: two years with possibility for extension depending on funding
  • This is a full-time non-tenure track position and the Director will solely be an employee of the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University.
  • Salary will be commensurate with experience.  Competitive benefits package.

Pace is committed to achieving completely equal opportunity in all aspects of University life. Applications are encouraged from people of color, individuals of varied sexual and affectional orientations, individuals who are differently-abled, veterans of the armed forces or national service, and anyone whose background and experience will contribute to the diversity of the law school.  

To apply: Please submit a cover letter, CV, writing sample, and list of references by June 30, 2016 via careers.pace.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=55840.

Any questions should be directed to Margot Pollans, mpollans@law.pace.edu.

Encyclical Released

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The Papal Encyclical on the Environment and Climate Change was released today, as expected.
 http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html

A quick perusal indicates that it is pretty much the same as the leaked draft.  Chapter 5 discusses international environmental law and governance extensively, generally mentioning the 2012 Rio+20 Conference (para. 169) and praising the 1992 Rio Declaration (para. 167) as well as three international environmental agreements (para. 168)– the 1989 Basel Convention on Hazardous Wastes, 1972 CITES, and the 1985 Vienna Convention on the Ozone Layer.  As noted, it also discusses two key environmental governance principles and their importance to government transparency and engagement of civil society: the duty to conduct environmental impact assessments and the precautionary principle.  It also references the need for enforceable environmental agreements (para. 173), certainly an important weak ingredient in international environmental law.

One thing that I didn’t catch in my first reading was the significant emphasis on national environmental governance in the “Dialogue on National and Local Policies,” especially the importance of the rule of law and good governance (para. 177) and reference to the growing jurisprudence of pollution law.  The listing of factors that must be considered in designing systems to protect the environment (“foresight and security, regulatory norms, timely enforcement, the elimination of corruption, effective responses to undesired side-effects of production processes, and appropriate intervention where potential or uncertain risks are involved”) included considerations that have also been considered by others to be critical to effective environmental governance.

It’s also been pointed out to me that the Encyclical denounces carbon trading as a form of speculation and avoidance of commitment to curbing excessive consumption (para. 171).  Strictly viewed, such wholesale condemnation seems to go overboard since pollution allowance trading schemes have proven themselves, not only in the US acid rain (SO2 trading) program but also in the context of the Montreal Protocol agreements regarding ozone layer protection (which allowed for the trading of ozone-depleting substances allowances, though they were supposed to be reduced and eventually eliminated).   And of course, carbon trading is a critical element of California’s cutting-edge effort to reduce its state-wide carbon emissions.  On the other hand, many international and national schemes to trade carbon credits have been of dubious value, primarily because program/market design didn’t actually ensure that there were “real” reductions in carbon emission and because there are oftentimes no effective accountability mechanisms to ensure the integrity of those system.  From that “real-world” perspective (based on how many carbon markets have operated in practice), the Encyclical’s characterization is arguably spot-on and reflects the views of many critics of carbon trading.

The Papal Encyclical Letter on the Environment

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Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment is scheduled for official public release tomorrow, Thursday, June 18. However, a leaked draft has already made its way around the web, and somebody shared it with me.  (I guess many Catholics, including at Santa Clara University, have been awaiting it eagerly.)

If the final version doesn’t change much from the draft, it will be a very expansive perspective on the relationship of humans to the environment and climate change.  Interestingly, chapter 5 discusses international environmental law and governance extensively.  The chapter touches on the 1992 Rio Declaration (para. 167) , the 2012 Rio+20 Conference (para. 169) and three international environmental agreements (para. 168)– the 1989 Basel Convention on Hazardous Wastes, 1972 CITES, and the 1985 Vienna Convention on the Ozone Layer.  It also discusses at some length two key environmental governance principles and their importance to government transparency and engagement of civil society: the duty to conduct environmental impact assessments and the precautionary principle.

Most remarkable,  however, is the encyclical’s critique of the effectiveness of international environmental law and treaties generally, especially failings of enforceability (para.173).  The document recognizes how critical the rule of law is to protecting the environment and that good governance in national systems is indispensable to that endeavor.

Based on a quick perusal of the encyclical, virtually all of these positions and perspectives appear to be squarely within the mainstream of what experts in the field, both scientists as well as experts on law and governance, think about the environmental issues and associated governance matters.  It is thus surprising to me that some media outlets have described the encyclical as potentially very controversial.  However, we will see soon how the public reacts to  all of this.

The US-China Climate "Deal"

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It’s been interesting to observe the many initial media reports on Tuesday’s climate change target announcements, characterizing the joint announcements about climate targets as “deals” or “agreement.” Then, after the initial media euphoria, much more criticism, both explaining that there wasn’t a deal and also that China’s commitment may not mean much.  (For example, Harvard’s Jack Goldsmith sought to de-hype the media reports in the Lawfare blog.)

On the deal issue, a careful reading of the announcement itself indicates that the US and China’s pledges were unilateral commitments that were not in themselves formally linked to each other.  So, of course not a deal in the formal sense of an agreement or a treaty.  On the other hand, a Wall Street Journal article discussing the run-up to the announcement as well as its orchestration leave little doubt that the decision to announce these goals publicly were the result of mutual reliance on the other’s public announcement of future action on GHG emissions.  And that sense, the announcement represents a “deal,” at least to give the public appearance of going forward in cooperation.  Either way one looks at it, though, there really was never any question that these pledges are not intended to be enforceable in any way.

Regardless, enthusiasm for the announcements, was still justified in my opinion – this level of engagement and specificity of public pledges by the US and China on climate change and their mutual engagement on the issue is historic and of critical important for the international community.

I do remain puzzled by the broad media assumption that China’s pledge will simply come true, in spite of the difficulties China has had in managing and addressing its existing pollution.  Not that the 2030 peak emission goal could not be achieved, especially since it is so far out and there is so much time.  But I don’t think there is real certainty, unless the underlying regulatory system is reformed in the process. Even with the anticipation of further industrial restructuring and macro-economic changes that will seek to change energy usage and supply so as to limit GHG emissions, it is not clear that that will be enough because of ongoing governance, implementation, and accountability difficulties.

But the underlying regulatory and governance challenges that have made it difficult to solve the existing pollution problems also point to an opportunity.  If China’s existing pollution control laws and accountability mechanisms were to be implemented effectively, including those contained in the recent 2014 Environmental Protection Law Revisions, that could justify much greater optimism about China’s GHG emission trajectory.

Joint US-China Announcement on Climate Change Targets

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It’s just been reported in the NY Times that US President Obama and China’s President Xi Jinping made a joint announcements about greenhouse gas emission targets.  There is also already a Fact Sheet from the White House on this.  The US will reduce its GHG emissions by 26-28% from 2005 levels by 2025.  China will peak CO2 emissions by 2030, with the intention to peak earlier and to increase the non-fossil fuel share of energy to around 20% by 2030.

These announcements compare with the US’s 2009 Copenhagen pledge of 17% reduction from 2005 levels by 2020 and China’s pledge of 40-45% reduction in emission intensity from 2005 levels by 2020 (i.e. not a pledge to actually limit GHG emissions overall, just to slow the consumption of energy per unit of GDP).

For the US, per the Fact Sheet, this would put it on a trajectory of 80% emission cuts of 2005 levels by 2050.  For China is especially notable because it had previously never made public commitments about peaking its GHG emission, implying that it would actually start reducing emissions after that peak.  Equally important, the joint announcement is a positive sign of US-China cooperative efforts on climate change, continuing the positive cooperative effort announced by both Presidents last year regarding HFC reductions (another potent GHG).  Ideally, this joint announcement will lead to more good things, both in terms of efforts at the national level as well as cooperation in international fora, such as the UNFCCC.

But there are of course caveats to the announcement.  For one thing, it’s not clear whether the reference to CO2 peaking by China was intentionally specific and designed to exclude other GHGs such as methane from the plan.  And the anticipated US reductions depend not only on the emission reductions will depend on ongoing regulatory efforts that may yet be challenged in the courts.  Keep in mind also that the base line under the Kyoto Protocol are 1990 levels of GHG emissions; so reductions from 2005 levels will look less impressive with a 1990 baseline.

One other item that struck me in the quick read of the Fact Sheet, almost a glaring omission in the list of cooperative efforts:  cooperation on environmental governance and regulation related to GHG emissions.  While the joint announcement is very positive in terms of staking out an official position for China with respect to eventual GHG emission reductions, the actually progress will only partially depend on technological advances.  China’s weak environmental governance system will be a huge drag on any of the central government’s domestic efforts to implement any national emission control objectives.  The sooner this impediment to emission control is recognized, the more likely it is (and the sooner) that the announced CO2 peak will actually be realized.

The omission in the announcement is also surprising because there is much that can be built upon with ongoing EPA-MEP (Ministry of Environmental Protection) cooperation on environmental law and regulation and because these positive EPA-MEP efforts were explicitly mentioned in last year’s US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue meeting.