The National Environmental Policy Act and Infrastructure Permitting Short Course

1 credits · Law School

Signed into law by President Nixon in 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was the first major environmental law passed by Congress. It has been described as the federal government’s Magna Carta of environmental law and as our “national charter for the protection of the environment” and to this day it remains the basic framework by which the federal government examines and accounts for the environmental consequences of its actions. NEPA is one of the primary statutes implicated in all federal infrastructure permits and touches the decisions of every agency from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Defense. This course will train students to critically assess federal agencies’ compliance with the obligations established by NEPA by learning the text of the statute, its implementing regulations, the review provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act, and major relevant case law. They will also learn the mechanics of NEPA litigation by closely examining a number of individual cases in which litigants have challenged agency NEPA issuances, particularly in the context of federal infrastructure permits. By the end of the course, students will have an appreciation of the method by which agencies discharge their obligations under NEPA and the litigation challenges agencies commonly confront. Pass/Fail. [1]