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 White Plains, NY - The expanding role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in shaping environmental laws that also influence health and communities will be explored by the head of one of the most influential of them in this year’s Kerlin Lecture at Pace Law School.
Peter Lehner, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), will speak Wednesday, October 1, at 5:00 p.m. in the Robert B. Fleming Moot Courtroom at Pace Law School, 78 North Broadway in White Plains. The lecture is free and open to the public. Media admission by press pass.
NGOs now play a major role in the creation, refinement, and enforcement of both federal and state environmental law. Their activities have expanded, Lehner believes, in the absence of legislative activity and federal enforcement.
Their scope is indicated by his title: “Environment, Law, and Nonprofits: How NGOs Shape Our Laws, Health, and Communities.”
Green business. At the NRDC, Lehner is responsible for guiding policy positions and advocacy strategies, supervising litigation, and managing NRDC’s six offices. He previously was chief of the Environmental Protection Bureau under New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, supervising all of the state’s environmental litigation, prosecuting a wide variety of polluters, and developing innovative multi-state strategies targeting global warming, acid rain, and smog-causing emissions from the country’s largest electric utility companies.
Lehner previously served at NRDC as a senior attorney in charge of the water program and before that created and led the environmental prosecution unit for New York City.
He holds an AB in philosophy from Harvard College and is a graduate of Columbia Law School, where he continues to teach environmental law. He also has extensive experience in sustainable farming and green business.
The lecture is the ninth Gilbert and Sarah Kerlin Lecture on Environmental Law, a series that each year brings some of the world’s most distinguished environmental thinkers to the Pace Law School to discuss leading-edge issues. The school’s pioneering environmental law program is consistently ranked third in the nation.
Founded in 1976, Pace University School of Law has nearly 6,500 alumni throughout the country and the world. It offers full- and part-time day and evening JD programs on its White Plains, NY, campus and offers the Master of Laws degree in Environmental Law, Real Estate Law and Comparative Legal Studies, and a Doctor of Laws in environmental law. The School of Law is part of Pace University, a comprehensive, independent, and diversified university with campuses in New York City and Westchester County. www.law.pace.edu
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