In this issue:
- Experts discuss the scope and impact of federal climate policy.
- Debating the intersection of technology and democracy.
- Meet the Democracy and the Rule of Law Clinic.
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Ideas
Since January 2025, the United States government has implemented sweeping changes to federal climate and clean energy policies. At a recent session called “Climate Law: The Path Forward,” a panel of four energy and environmental law experts discussed the scope of these changes and their impact on the future of climate policy.
Hosted by the Environmental and Energy Law Program, the event featured remarks by Professor Jody Freeman LL.M. ’91 S.J.D. ’95, Professor Richard Lazarus ’79, Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic Faculty Director Andrew Mergen, and Environmental and Energy Law Program Executive Director Carrie Jenks.
Opening the event, Lazarus cautioned that recent roll-backs were unprecedented in their scope and ambition: “I think it’s fair to say it’s no less than a wholesale effort to destroy environmental law, at least at the federal level, with a bull’s eye on environmental justice and climate change.” Read full coverage in Harvard Law Today.
Technology and Democracy
Technology and good governance are no longer separate domains, if indeed they ever were, and it is time for experts in both fields to come together to protect civil liberties and democracy, argued speakers at an event at Harvard Law School last month.
“The internet has become more important to everything, including, increasingly, to questions about democracy and the rule of law and how we’re going to govern ourselves — and are we still going to govern ourselves,” said Cindy Cohn, the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The event, hosted by metaLAB and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, featured Cohn in conversation with Larry Schwartztol, faculty director of the Democracy and the Rule of Law Clinic and a professor of practice at Harvard Law School.
Joined by moderator Sarah Newman, director of Art and Education at metaLAB at Harvard, the pair discussed the intersection of technology and democracy, as well as the power and limitations of the law in tackling important problems. Read more in Harvard Law Today.
Clinics
Earlier this year we spoke with Agatha and Brian, two students in the Democracy and the Rule of Law Clinic at Harvard Law School. Students in the clinic partner with Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to preventing democratic decline and promoting pro-democracy reforms.
Read more
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/harvard-law-today-future-climate-policy-harvard-law-school-bxbke/
