October 20, 2014

LC welcomes Distinguished Visitor Prof. Richard Revesz, and honors Distinguished Grads

Lewis & Clark’s Environmental Law program welcomed Professor Richard Revesz, Lawrence King Professor and Dean Emeritus, New York University School of Law, to Lewis & Clark in the fall of 2014 for a series of discussions, class visits, and a public lecture on: Interest Groups and Environmental Policy: Inconsistent Opinions and Missed Opportunities. The law school also honored three of its distinguished graduates: Alan Merkle (’82), Kristen Fletcher (’98), and Grant Cope (’98), and awarded the Williamson Award to recent graduate, JJ England (’14).

Lewis & Clark’s Environmental Law program welcomed Professor Richard Revesz, Lawrence King Professor and Dean Emeritus, New York University School of Law, to Lewis & Clark in the fall of 2014 for a series of discussions, class visits, and a public lecture on: Interest Groups and Environmental Policy: Inconsistent Opinions and Missed Opportunities. The law school also honored three of its distinguished graduates: Alan Merkle (’82), Kristen Fletcher (’98), and Grant Cope (’98), and awarded the Williamson Award to recent graduate, JJ England (’14).

 Professor Revesz is one of the nation’s leading voices in the fields of environmental and regulatory law and policy. His work focuses on the use of cost-benefit analysis in administrative regulation, federalism and environmental regulation, design of liability regimes for environmental protection, and positive political economy analysis of environmental regulation. He has published eight books and 60 articles in major law reviews and journals. In 2008, Revesz co-founded the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law, which he directs, to advocate for regulatory reform before courts, legislatures, and agencies, and to contribute original scholarly research in the environmental and health-and-safety areas. Revesz received a BS summa cum laude from Princeton University, an MS in civil engineering from MIT, and a JD from Yale Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal.

Prior to the public lecture, the law school honored three environmental law alumni as Distinguished Environmental Law Graduates.  This award, started in 1995 in honor of the environmental law program’s 25th anniversary, recognizes several alumni each year who have made a significant contribution to the environmental or natural resources law or policy fields.   The environmental and natural resources law faculty select the recipients each year.  The recipients for 2014 are:  Alan Merkle, ’82, a partner in the Energy Development practice group and former Chairman of Stoel Rives LLP Seattle office; Grant Cope, ’98, Deputy Secretary for Environmental Policy for the California EPA; and Kristen Fletcher, ’98, Principal of Fletcher Coastal Consulting in Pacific Grove, California, and an Associate with the Coastal States Organization in Washington, D.C. 

 The Environmental Alumni Association also presented the annual Williamson Award to honor a recent graduate of the environmental and natural resources law program dedicated to the pursuit of public interest environmental law.  The Environmental Alumni Association provides funding for this award, named for Emeritus Professor Bill Williamson, the founder of Lewis & Clark’s environmental law program.  This year’s recipient is JJ England, ’14.