Environmental law is a strange legal creature. I like to imagine it looks a little like a hybrid car would ten to fifteen years in the future, still in pretty good shape, but with some parts held together with duct tape here and there. Our environmental laws require businesses to clean up the toxic messes they made in the past, even though it used to be legal to make them, prevent business and government from making them in the future,  protect and recover species from extinction, try to prevent or at least unravel the mess that is environmental racism and inequity in this country, lower the particulate matter in our air and clear the toxins from our water, to name a few.

The hodge podge series of laws that make up our nation’s envrionmental legal arena often seem hobbled together, in part because they were. Many of the laws were written in haste and enacted in response to seeming environmental disasters during the Nixon administration. They often refer to each other, instead of being whole laws unto themselves, requiring those who practice environmental law to flip between statutes to get the exact meaning of certain terms and conditions.

But they are, I believe anyway, fun.

Which is why my summer will be spent fighting on behalf of some cats, some mussels, some beetles, and the air we breathe. Sound like a party to you?

The guest list is a distinguised one, as the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will be invited to dance with me at each and every one of my shindigs, well, everyone but the Clean Air Act case, I think that one gets to go to someone else. I will find out soon.

My first case goes live on the 18th. Once the press release goes live, I will copy it here so you all can read up on it.