Teaching Environmental Law After Trump

This Article addresses some of the challenges in teaching environmental law after the administration of President Donald Trump. The Trump Administration mounted a relentless, aggressive, and largely deregulatory overhaul of the nation’s major environmental regulatory efforts, particularly the efforts of the prior Obama Administration. Many of these efforts by the Trump Administration have been challenged in court, some successfully, while others have been reversed or are in the process of reversal by the administration of President Joseph Biden. For teachers of environmental law, these actions present opportunities to demonstrate how regulatory agencies (under the direction of presidents), rather than Congress, have become the driving force of change in environmental regulation and the limits of that approach to addressing the nation’s environmental issues.

The Article surveys recent administrative action under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act and how these matters were addressed in a basic environmental law survey course.