Environmental law
New director focuses on environmental policy
By Michelle Hershman, L'07
Noah Sachs teaches a course on environmental law.
At a time when environmental issues are front-page news, the Robert R. Merhige Jr. Center for Environmental Studies at the School of Law is increasing its visibility, and its new director plans even more activities and conferences in the coming year.
“Richmond has always had a big commitment to environmental law,” says Noah Sachs, the center’s director, who began teaching at the law school last fall with a background in environmental and international law and a resume that includes jobs at the EPA, private practice and a teaching fellowship at Harvard Law School.
Although Sachs always loved the outdoors, it wasn’t until his first job after college as media and outreach coordinator for the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research that he started to hear about environmental laws and came to understand the power of public disclosure.
“I saw how community groups were left out of environmental decision-making,” he says, referring to groups he worked with that lived near U.S. nuclear weapons production facilities. “My mission was to give the community a voice in Washington policymaking.”
The Merhige Center has its origins in an environmental lawsuit. Some of its initial funding came from the settlement of a lawsuit in the mid-1970s heard by the late Judge Merhige, a law school alumnus. Merhige imposed a $13.3 million fine on Allied Chemical Co. for violating anti-pollution laws when it released a dangerous insecticide into the James River. Some of the funds were used to establish the Virginia Environmental Endowment, which in turn gave the first grant to establish the Merhige Center in 1985.
The center’s mission is to engage in research, instruction and public outreach on energy and environmental issues. Sachs says the center will provide an additional resource for students outside of class, such as field trips, speakers and conferences. It also sponsors research and other activities that benefit the Richmond community.
During the fall, the Merhige Center sponsored a major conference, “Preserving the Chesapeake: Law, Ecology and the Bay.” It assessed the progress made since the signing of the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement, which aimed to restore the bay’s water by 2010. Participants at the conference included academic experts, government regulators, policy- makers, nonprofit groups and lawyers.
“This is exactly what the Merhige Center should be doing—bringing people together and being a resource to the community to facilitate discussions about the environment,” Sachs says.
Other activities last semester included hosting Jan Schlichtmann, an attorney who became famous through a lawsuit challenging two companies that contaminated drinking water in a Massachusetts town. The litigation was the subject of the 1995 book and 1998 movie, A Civil Action.
Sachs would like to expand the center’s programs to include publishing short studies and reports about the environment that could be released to policymakers and the national media. He also plans to write op-eds and sponsor more conferences. Implementing additional activities will require help from students, and Sachs says he will work closely with the newly formed student group, Richmond Environmental Law Society (RELS).
“I love to work one-on-one with students and will be organizing more activities,” says Sachs, who accompanied RELS students on a field trip with biology professor Peter Smallwood to look at invasive species on campus last semester. “I will need help organizing conferences and with research studies. I’m open to student ideas about the future direction of the Merhige Center.”
Sachs currently has a research assistant who is helping him with an article on the role of litigation in international environment disputes.
“I’ve really enjoyed working with Professor Sachs,” says Mike Clements, L’08. “I research and draft summaries of arguments that he uses to help him write the law review article he’s working on. I also help him coordinate various events involving the Merhige Center.”
Sachs is extending invitations to several speakers this semester and promises the Merhige Center is going to get bigger and better. In a few months, it will unveil its first Web site.
Sachs also is researching other law school environmental centers. There are about 15 in the country, and the directors meet once a year. The centers range from large, with faculty, staff, law clinics and quarterly newsletters, to small, with one or two faculty members.
“Each center needs a niche,” Sachs says. “Whatever we do, I believe the program should have local relevance. There should be at least one program in the center focusing on Virginia issues such as land-use, sprawl, transportation, energy or water quality.