The Colorado Internet Center for Environmental
Problem Solving
University Environmental Course Listings
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- Water Law, Policy, and Institutions
- Contemporary issues in water management based on legal doctrine. Legal issues in water resource problems are identified and
discussed in close relationship with technical, economic, and political considerations.
- Public Land Law
- Deals with the legal status and management of federal lands. Explores federal law, policy, and agency practice affecting the use of mineral, timber,
range, water, wildlife, and wilderness resources on public lands.
- Foundations of Natural Resources Law and Policy
- Examines the historical, political, and intellectual influences that created and shaped major areas of law governing land
and natural resources development and conservation, especially in the American West. Readings include books and articles by leading writers as well as the landmark court decisions. Enables students with a passing interest in natural resources to take a single course in the field. Allows
students going on to take other natural resource courses a more advanced treatment of the subject matter.
- Water Resources
- Analysis of regional and national water problems, including legal methods by which water supplies are allocated, and an examination of problems
involved in water resource planning.
- Oil and Gas
- Deals with the legal problems associated with private arrangements forth ownership and development of oil and gas: deeds and leases to oil and gas rights.
trespass, adverse possession, implied covenants in leases, conveyances of fractional interests, and the interaction of private right and conservation regulation.
- Mining Law
- Federal law governing access to and development of hard rock minerals on public lands; location of claims; issues of discovery; assessment work; patents;
and environmental regulation.
- Pollution Law
- Examination and analysis of important federal pollution control statutes, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, Clean Water
Act, Solid Waste Act, and Superfund, Related economic theory and policy issues are considered.
- Natural Resources Litigation Clinic
- Offers hands-on experience in the practice of natural resources law in the Rocky Mountain region to a select number of clinic
students. Affords an inside view into both complex environmental litigation as well as alternative dispute resolution. Students participate in traditional litigation as well as alternative dispute resolution. Students participate in traditional litigation, administrative advocacy, legislative
drafting, and the conduct of complex negotiations and settlements.
- Hazardous Waste and Toxic Torts
- Examines statutorily-imposed responsibility and common-law tort and product liability exposure. These are discussed in relation to the
growing problem of the handling and disposal of toxic substances and hazardous waste as they impact public health and the environment. Focuses on federal law and that of several states regulating chemicals and toxic substances, hazardous waste disposal, and clean-up of contaminated
sites.
- Legal Negotiation and Dispute Resolution
- Explores fundamentals of effective negotiation techniques and policies for lawyers. Students engage in mock negotiations of
several legal disputes. Examines a variety of dispute resolution processes such as mediation, arbitration, mini-trials, and court-annexed settlement procedures as alternatives to traditional court adjudication.
- Conservation Philosophy and the Law
- This course will study the writings of leading conservation philosophers and examine the extent to which their ideas have
influenced federal and state policy and law. Issues to be studied will include biocentrism, homocentrism, utilitarianism, preservation of wild area, economic analysis, natural resource planning, and integrated resource management. Students should have a solid working knowledge of
natural resources policy and law.
- Independent Legal Research: International Environmental Law Journal
- Students participate in the research, writing, and editing activities involved in publishing the
Colorado Journal of Environmental Law and Policy. Standards for the awarding of credit are set and applied by the faculty.
- Seminar: Advanced Natural Resources Law
- For students with a strong interest in natural resources issues in the American West. Coverage is based upon biological and
geographical classifications where numerous resource issues converge. Studies historical, literary, and scientific materials and then moves to an analysis of current problems relating to matters such as federal public lands, wildlife habitat, water quantity, ocean and coastal law, land us
planning, pollution control, Indian law, and state, federal authority as they implicate the topic of the seminar.
- Seminar: Advanced Water Resource Management
- Explores the use of watersheds as geographic and political entities for addressing water- related issues. Introduces the
nature of watersheds and their historical treatment, and looks at the ways in which laws and institutions facilitate or impede watershed-based problem solving or decision-making. Students prepare and present major research papers focusing on a particular water issue and explore solutions
in the context of the entire watershed with its related problems and multiple, interconnected interest.
- Seminar: Biotechnology and Law
- Legal, moral, and economic analysis of problems posed or soon to be posed by advances in biomedical technologies. Examines
problems raised by behavior control through organic intervention, including psychosurgery, psychoactive drugs. and electrical stimulation of the brain; genetic engineering, amplification of human powers and faculties by artificial means, including organ transplantation, man-machine
symbiosis, and pharmacologically induced enhancement of mental functioning; death and dying; and regulation of experimentation with human subjects. Discusses problems in distributive justice posed by limited availability of biotechnological commodities, as well as issues arising from
enforced treatment.
- Seminar: Alternative Dispute Resolution
- A study of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) theory, its application in specific contexts (e. g., civil rights), procedural
approaches to ADR, advantages and disadvantages of using ADR, and the attorney's roles in ADR processes.
- Seminar: International Environmental Law
- Deals with selected issues in environmental law that involve the United States and one or more other countries. Students
prepare research papers on topics dealing with trans-boundary pollution, extraterritorial application of federal water courses, export or disposal of hazardous materials, regulation of foreign aid and investment affecting the environment, options for controlling global climate change, and
the use of treaties to protect the environment.
- Nature of Law
- Examines basic principles and values embodied in the United States legal system. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: United States context.
- Introduction to the Policy Sciences: The Problem Orientation
- This is a course about how to do policy analysis. In Policy for Public Decisions, MacRae and Wilde define
policy analysis as "the use of reason and evidence to choose the best policy among a number of alternatives" to a particular policy problem. many other definitions have been offered, but the common thread is a systematic reasoning about alternative courses of action to deal with a policy
problem, in effect "knowledge in and of the policy process".
- Introduction to the Policy Sciences: The Problem Orientation
- This is a course about how to do policy analysis. In Policy for Public Decisions, MacRae and Wilde define
policy analysis as "the use of reason and evidence to choose the best policy among a number of alternatives" to a particular policy problem. many other definitions have been offered, but the common thread is a systematic reasoning about alternative courses of action to deal with a policy
problem, in effect "knowledge in and of the policy process".
- Policy Analysis/Applications: The Decision Process
- This course provides an introduction to the decision process of public policy: the set of activities that together
define the continuum of public policy decision- making. For the student, the course has two primary goals: 1) to gain a basic conceptual understanding of the public policy decision process; and 2)to become adept at analyzing the various dimensions of the decision process for the
purpose of strategizing and making recommendation about how to realize a set of preferred policy outcomes in applied policy settings. To these ends, the course plan alternates between the intensive consideration of a set of readings about the different phases of the policy decision
process, and the analysis and application of decision process concepts to cases selected by students.
- Public Policy Analysis II: Applications
- This course is designed to teach students interested in public policy a systematic method for analyzing public policy problems.
The emphasis is on learning the method by application to a concrete problem of concern to the student. The objective of the course is to provide policy analysts with the conceptual tools necessary to develop a policy recommendation for a given problem and to develop a political strategy
to implement that recommendation.
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For more information contact: Guy Burgess, Co-Director,
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(303)492-2154; E-Mail: crc@colorado.eduCopyright 1997 by Conflict Research Consortium