Learning Objectives.

​Introduction to U.S. Law, Policy, and Research -- an Environmental Perspective (2019) -- is the textbook used in the Environmental Law Class, Policy and Decision-making, whose teaching objectives are:

1. Teach the origins, history, and structure of the U.S. legal system; the ecological and ethical bases of environmental law, its use in environmental policy and decision- making, and its role in cost-benefit analysis and risk management.
2. Develop legal literacy and teach how to read opinions of important cases that elucidate how courts create common law and especially environmental law through the interpretation and application of environmental statutes and regulations.
3. Teach how to use legal research tools to find “good law” by analyzing precedent; teach how citations work; teach how to locate statutes and their associated rules and regulations, and how to find cases that determine the meaning of statutes.
4. Teach how to brief cases.
5. Teach how case law determines the meaning of a statute.
6. Teach how to write an internal (persuasive) office memo.
7. Teach how to orally present a legal argument.
8. Teach how to develop a capstone project with an outside organization.