By John C. Dernbach Distinguished Professor of Law
Sustainable development is the internationally and nationally recognized framework for reconciling environmental protection with economic and social development. Most of us tend to think that we have to choose between development and environment—as if we were picking which team to cheer for—development or environment. Sustainable development offers another alternative—development and environment. Its overall objective is maintaining and improving human quality of life for this and future generations.
In the United States, sustainability has been embraced in a growing number of contexts. These include green building, local and organic food, sustainable forestry, and energy efficiency. Colleges and universities, local governments, and corporations (Microsoft aims to make its operations carbon neutral) are among the most active practitioners.
They all understand that the global economy, population, and environmental degradation are growing, and that there are huge unmet human needs throughout the world. They all see that we have no choice but to make economic development, job creation, and environmental protection work together rather than against each other. And they seek to translate those basic realities into reduced risks and greater opportunities.
Sustainable development will be enormously important to the careers of students now in law school, regardless of where they practice law or what kind of legal work they do. As the July 30, 2015 Final Report of the Sustainable Development Task Force of the American Bar Association states: "Going forward, lawyers will need to become involved in a broad range of sustainability issues. Younger lawyers, who represent the future of the legal profession, often understand these issues better than the lawyers who would hire them. The transition to sustainability in both governmental and private sector decision making is inevitable and will profoundly affect the legal profession."
Sustainable development is a growing part of law practice in nearly every practice area and involves many different skills. As corporate, governmental, and nongovernmental clients embrace sustainability, they expect their attorneys to have the necessary knowledge and skills, including, of course, an understanding of what sustainability means. As the ABA Task Force stated:
Sustainability is affecting, or will affect, tax law, insurance, banking, finance, real estate development, environmental and energy law, among other fields. It also involves a wide range of knowledge and skills, including commercial transactions, client counseling, litigation, advocacy before governmental agencies and other bodies, and legislative drafting.
As clients increasingly demand legal work that addresses sustainable development issues, lawyers are responding to that demand. Law schools are increasingly doing the same—across the entire range of their activities, including courses, scholarship, facilities, and community service.
In the Real World
My Sustainability Law and Practice class provides students with skills they will need to help clients meet their sustainability goals. These skills include application of the principles of sustainable development in specific contexts; researching local government law; legislative/ordinance drafting; giving short presentations; and client counseling. Many of these skills are essential to the practice of law in general. I adapted the class from one taught by Professor Jonathan Rosenbloom at Drake Law School in Des Moines, Iowa.
Each year, the class focuses on a local government client. Communities are an excellent place to study and practice sustainability. In addition to the reality that they already provide a rich source of experience on sustainability, the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of issues are easier to identify and experience at the local level.
In the fall of 2014, our client was the city of Harrisburg, in no small part because Mayor Eric Papenfuse campaigned on a sustainability platform. Students drafted proposed amendments to city ordinances, as well as justifications for their proposals. This gave them the opportunity to translate the conceptual framework of sustainability into a real-world proposal that might actually become law.
Their proposals were based on topics chosen by the city. At the end of the semester, they presented their proposals at a special meeting of City Council. “This is a wonderful idea to incorporate what you are learning in class in such a real world way,” Papenfuse said. “You now have the ears of the city’s movers and shakers.” Since that time, Harrisburg has upgraded its recycling program and adopted a new food truck ordinance that is similar in scope, emphasis, and administration to that proposed by Matt Fine '15, a student in the class. In fall 2015, the primary client of the class was the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors, which has more than 1,400 member municipalities representing more than five million people and covering 95 percent of Pennsylvania’s land area. The class researched and drafted model sustainability ordinances and wrote a narrative explaining and justifying them. The topics, chosen by the association after consultation with its members, were blight, community housing, walkability, natural gas pipeline setbacks, stormwater mitigation, rain gardens, permeable paving, and green roofs.
Before Thanksgiving, the students presented their draft model ordinances to two dozen municipal solicitors at the association’s Fall Solicitors Seminar. The solicitors were uniformly positive in their praise of the professionalism and thoughtfulness of the student presentations. Many had specific suggestions for how the students could improve their ordinances.
The association plans to post the final narratives and model ordinances on its website, so that they can be considered and adopted by any of its member municipalities. In addition, the Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs and the Pennsylvania Municipalities League have expressed an interest in doing so.
The plan is to use this and future classes to create a bank of model sustainability ordinances that municipalities can consider and adopt.
For the students, this is a law skills class, but it is much more than that. It is a course that gives them the opportunity to make a contribution, and to see themselves as lawyers capable of continuing to make a contribution after they graduate.
