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 White Plains, NY - Through an ongoing commitment to fostering both school-wide and individual eco-awareness and improvement, Pace Law School is the second law school in the nation to participate in the "Law Office Climate Challenge," an initiative created by the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to promote environmental sustainability.
The Climate Challenge was created by the ABA, in cooperation with the EPA, as a way of encouraging law offices (including law schools, nonprofit entities, and law firms) to take specific steps to conserve energy and resources, as well as reduce emissions of greenhouse gases – which have been linked to global climate change – and other pollutants.
“Our Center for Environmental Legal Studies has been a leader in the field for over 30 years,” said Pace Law School Dean Michelle S. Simon. “As an educational institution, we are in a unique position to serve as a model of ecological and social responsibility by incorporating sustainability into the present and future ventures by our community.”
Meeting the challenge. Pace Law School is meeting the challenge by participating in the ABA's "Best Practices for Office Paper Management" program. The life cycle of one ton of paper, from production to recycling, results in the generation of about nine tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions. To mitigate these emissions, Pace Law School currently uses 30% recycled content paper for copying and printing and blue recycling receptacles can be easily found around campus and in offices. The current goal is to recycle 90% of mixed office paper. A campus-wide email, including instructions, was also sent out to the community asking for students, faculty, and staff to use double-sided printing when possible and encouraging the use of a statement in email correspondence reminding recipients to print only when necessary.
Students create policy and launch organic garden. Participation in the Climate Challenge is only one of many recent initiatives by Pace Law School to promote sustainability. The Pace Law School Environmental Sustainability Policy Statement was recently developed by students to instill an “eco-ethic” among everyone on campus. The policy is a comprehensive pledge to engage in practices which pursue a path committed to environmental and social stewardship and which facilitate sustainability in campus purchasing, operations, culture, and consumption.
Pace Law students have also launched a Volunteer Vegetable Garden Project, another component of a larger plan to increase campus sustainability. Students hope that the garden will cultivate community and will call attention to the accessibility of gardening on a small, local, and organic scale, which in turn contributes to large-scale sustainability.
“I am tremendously proud of the initiative shown by our students to green our campus,” notes Assistant Dean for Environmental Law Programs Alexandra Dapolito Dunn. “Pace Law School’s location in a highly developed area close to one of the world’s largest cities gives us a unique ability to demonstrate that sustainability can be advanced in many creative ways – and that it is a meaningful effort at urban and suburban institutions.”
Ranked 3rd in Nation by U.S. News & World Report. Once again Pace Law School’s Environmental Law Program was ranked 3rd nationwide in its "America's Best Graduate Schools 2009" survey. U.S. News & World Report determines the Environmental Law Program rankings by tallying nominations given by peer law schools.
Converging strengths. With a significant number of full-time environmental law professors and nearly 30 courses, Pace Law School offers JD, LLM, and SJD degrees with an emphasis on advanced environmental law research and law reform. Pace is a national leader in environmental studies and activities, providing students unparalleled opportunities for experiential learning through its Land Use Law Center, Energy and Climate Center, Environmental Litigation Clinic (co-directed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Karl Coplan), and United Nations Diplomacy Program. Pace’s leadership on international environmental issues is evidenced by the school’s collaboration with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law, as well its strong standing in the legal community. Pace’s Environmental Law Review (PELR) is a respected academic journal, and the Law School hosts the National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition each year, which draws over 70 law schools from across the nation to compete in oral and written advocacy on a mock environmental case drawn from real world events.
Costs and caps. For more than 20 years, Pace’s Energy and Climate Center has been a leading multi-disciplinary source of environmental research and advocacy on issues involving the highly-regulated energy industry, both in New York State and throughout the Northeast, while training law students in these areas. The Center developed the first methodology for assessing the previously under-recognized environmental and social costs of power generation methods, a technique which remains a driving force in international research and policy studies. Recently, the Center played an active role in the Northeast Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which is implementing a multi-state cap-and-trade program with a market-based emissions trading system designed to reduce greenhouse gases from electric generation.
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. The School also offers the Master of Laws in Environmental Law, Real Estate Law and in Comparative Legal Studies and an SJD in environmental law. The School of Law is part of a comprehensive, independent, and diversified University with campuses in New York City and Westchester County. www.law.pace.edu.
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