The Coleman P. Burke Environmental Law Center hosted its first junior environmental law scholar conference on May 21, 2024. This marks an expansion of the Burke Center’s commitment to fostering new academic voices in environmental, natural resources and climate law, and leveraging the knowledge of Burke’s senior \environmental law faculty and other prominent environmental law professor around the nation. The in-person program was designed to assist junior scholars with new article projects involving environmental law, energy and resources law and climate change law, and to also provide long term career and teaching guidance in the environmental law sphere. The program kicked off the prior evening with a dinner for all of the participants in Cleveland’s famed Little Italy, with substantive programming on May 21 at the School of Law’s Active Learning Center.
Six pre-tenured professors or fellows from across the country were chosen to attend based on article ideas submitted earlier in the year. This year’s pre-tenure attendees included associate professor Annie Brett from the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law; assistant professor Luis Inajara Vera from Gonzaga University Law School; Chiara Pappalardo, who is receiving her SJD from Georgetown University School of Law; visiting professor Paul Rink, from Pace Elisabeth Haub Law School; associate professor Joseph A. Schremmer, from Oklahoma University Law School; and associate professor Jonathan Skinner-Thompson, from Colorado Law. Article topics discussed included subsurface property rights, scientific uncertainty and conceptions of environmental rights.
The Burke Center received more than three times as many applications from junior scholars as could be accommodated with this specific program, prompting the center to offer many junior faculty around the country the opportunity to present at Case Western Reserve University School of Law’s robust faculty workshops throughout the year.
Participating as reviewers and senior environmental law professor mentors were Carol M. Rose, the Lohse Chair in Water and Natural Resources and Professor Emerita of Law (Arizona), and the Gordon Bradford Tweedy Professor Emeritus of Law (Yale); Richard Lazarus, the Charles Stebbins Fairchild Professor of Law at Harvard Law School; Alexandra Klass, the James G. Degnan Professor of Law and Co-director, Environmental and Energy Law Program, University of Michigan Law School; and the Case Western School of Law’s own Jonathan Adler ( the Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law, and Director, Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law), and Victor B. Flatt (Coleman P. Burke Chair in Environmental Law, and Associate Director, the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law). The Burke Center’s professors Beth Nagusky and Miranda Leppla also participated in parts of the programming.