Environmental Law Symposium

Overview

The University of Kansas School of Law will host the first bienniel Environmental Law Symposium on Friday, March 6, 2026, entitled "The Nexus Symposium: Crosscutting Environmental Issues and Intersections."

From the 1960s through the 1980s, Congress and the states established environmental, natural resources and energy laws largely on a medium-by-medium (e.g., Clean Air Act vs. Clean Water Act), resource-by-resource (e.g., water vs. energy), sovereign-by-sovereign (United States vs. states vs. Tribes), and/or place-by-place basis (e.g., federal public lands vs. anywhere else). While these laws generally made a good first cut at reducing pollution, managing resources and providing reliable energy, we have now reached the point where the need for new linkages and cooperations both among these legal regimes and between these regimes and other laws and developments has become increasingly obvious.

This symposium brings together prominent environmental, natural resources and energy law scholars from around the United States to discuss their favorite legal intersections and cross-cutting issues. Topics range from the food system to public lands to multiple water nexuses to climate change tipping points.

Registration will open in January.

Speakers

• Cynthia Barnett | Author; Journalist
• Robin Kundis Craig | University of Kansas School of Law | Robert A. Schroeder Distinguished Professor of Law
• Holly Doremus | UC Berkeley School of Law | Associate Dean, Faculty Development and Research; James H. House and Hiram H. Hurd Professor of Environmental Regulation; Co-Director, Law of the Sea Institute; Co-Faculty Director, Berkeley Institute for Parks, People, and Biodiversity
• Robert Glicksman | George Washington University Law School | J. B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law
• Burke Griggs | Washburn University School of Law | Professor of Law; Director, Center for Resources Energy and Environmental Law
• Lisa Heinzerling | Georgetown University Law Center | Justice William J. Brennan Jr. Professor of Law
• James May | Washburn University School of Law | Richard S. Righter Distinguished Professor of Law
• Sharmila L. Murthy | Northeastern University School of Law | Professor of Law and Public Policy; Faculty Co-Director, Center for Public Interest Advocacy and Collaboration
• Uma Outka | University of Kansas School of Law | William R. Scott Law Professor
• J.B. Ruhl | Vanderbilt University Law School | David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair in Law; Director, Program on Law and Innovation; Co-Director, Energy, Environment and Land Use Program
   

Schedule

8 - 8:45 a.m. | Check-in and Breakfast

8:45 - 9 a.m. | Welcome and Introductions

• Stephen Mazza | University of Kansas School of Law | Dean
• Uma Outka | University of Kansas School of Law | William R. Scott Law Professor
• Robin Kundis Craig | University of Kansas School of Law | Robert A. Schroeder Distinguished Professor of Law

9 - 10:15 a.m. | Land, Water and Food

Moderator: Robin Kundis Craig | University of Kansas School of Law | Robert A. Schroeder Distinguished Professor of Law

Panelists:

• Holly Doremus | UC Berkeley School of Law | Associate Dean, Faculty Development and Research; James H. House and Hiram H. Hurd Professor of Environmental Regulation; Co-Director, Law of the Sea Institute; Co-Faculty Director, Berkeley Institute for Parks, People, and Biodiversity

  The Land-Water Nexus

  The need for and challenges of regulating water and land in concert, with particular attention to implications for wildlife conservation and rural land use/farm policy.

• Robert Glicksman | George Washington University Law School | J. B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law

  Climate Change and Multiple Federal Lands Mandates

  The federal government owns approximately 30 percent of the surface land area in the United States. Congress has allocated responsibility for managing these lands to four principal agencies: the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. Each of these agencies operates under its own organic statute, which provides the standards it must apply in managing the lands under its jurisdiction. These standards differ from agency to agency, as the organic statutes differentially prioritize some goals and uses while restricting or prohibiting others. Two of the agencies operate under multiple use, sustained yield standards.  The others are governed by "dominant use" mandates, which seek to foster preservation, recreation, or wildlife preservation. The impacts of climate change are making adherence to the management mandates of the four agencies problematic. Lands that used to be suitable for preserving certain species are, or may soon become, inhospitable to these species. Areas that used to have sufficient water to promote certain uses have become, or may soon become, too arid to support those uses. These changes are transforming the jurisdictional boundaries of the land management agencies into obstacles to effective management of the federal lands, as conditions that were once thought to be relatively static are in considerable flux. This presentation will focus on the challenges facing the federal land management agencies in the face of climate change and will suggest how federal land management may need to adjust in response to those challenges.

• Lisa Heinzerling | Georgetown University Law Center | Justice William J. Brennan Jr. Professor of Law

  The Food Environment: Soil, Water, and Air

  Just as environmental laws are often criticized for sufficing with end-of-the-pipe solutions to environmental problems, the laws governing the safety of our food have tended to focus on the wholesomeness of food products themselves rather than on the actions that make food unwholesome in the first place. Broadening our gaze to take in the environmental conditions in which our food is grown or caught reveals not only the magnitude of the problem of food safety but also potential new levers for addressing this problem. This talk will consider how pollution of the soil, water, and land affects the quality of our food, and how food safety and environmental protection are, well, like peas in a pod.

10:15 - 10:45 a.m. | Morning Break

10:45 a.m. - 12 p.m. | Water, Property and Renewable Energy

Moderator: John Head | University of Kansas School of Law | Robert W. Wagstaff Distinguished Professor

Panelists:

• Burke Griggs | Washburn University School of Law | Professor of Law; Director, Center for Resources Energy and Environmental Law

  Integrative Rules for Critical Minerals Brines

  As this Symposium describes, most of our nation's environmental and natural resources laws were enacted on a resource-by-resource basis. That is also the case with our property regimes. The relative novelty and explosive expansion in global lithium demand and other critical minerals provides an opportunity to avoid resource and governance segregation. This presentation provides a descriptive overview of critical minerals brine development across the Americas (the Lithium Triangle of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, as well as developments on state and federal lands in the Great Basin of the USA), and then provides prescriptive recommendations for how to recognize and allocate property rights in brines, how to regulate their sustainable extraction through water budgets, and how to reduce the environmental and carbon footprints of brine mining.

• Robin Kundis Craig | University of Kansas School of Law | Robert A. Schroeder Distinguished Professor of Law

  Solar Canals: Renewable Energy While Saving Land and Water

  Although a relatively new concept in the United States, installing solar panels over waterbodies is common in other countries. This talk reviews the benefits to land, water, and the energy transition of installing solar panels over water, but also the potential complications of land ownership and easements, water rights, and energy transmission. After surveying lake a reservoir projects around the world and in the United States, the talk will focus on the Gila River Tribe’s new solar canal in Arizona and a solar canal pilot project at the Turlock Irrigation District in California.

• Uma Outka | University of Kansas School of Law | William R. Scott Law Professor

  Clean Energy and Home Energy Security

  Energy affordability is making headlines as federal support for clean energy has sharply reversed in favor of fossil energy. The nexus between energy policy and home energy security is complex – its enduring political salience in the US overlays environmental, social, and economic themes with domestic and international implications, and directly affects financial stability and wellbeing for millions of Americans. This presentation takes stock of current policy intersections between energy and energy affordability at the household scale with a focus on the role of clean energy. Reviewing the last year of upheaval in the energy sector, and the federal, state, and local roles in clean energy development, the presentation will highlight key issues and dynamics animating this nexus and the potential for clean energy to serve both environmental and home energy affordability aims.

12 -12:30 p.m. | Lunch served

12:30 - 1:15 p.m. | Keynote

Cynthia Barnett is an award-winning author and journalist who reports on water and climate change around the world. She is the author of four books: The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans; Rain: A Natural and Cultural  History; Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis; and Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S. She is currently completing a new book on groundwater, The Sea Beneath Us, and working through KU on an interdisciplinary project involving AI and the High Plains Aquifer.

1:15 - 1:30 p.m. | Afternoon Break

1:30 - 2:45 p.m. | The Nexuses of Environmental Law 

Moderator: Uma Outka | University of Kansas School of Law | William R. Scott Law Professor

Panelists:

• Sharmila L. Murthy | Northeastern University School of Law | Professor of Law and Public Policy; Faculty Co-Director, Center for Public Interest Advocacy and Collaboration

  The Cumulative Impact Nexus

  This talk will explore the existing landscape on the use of cumulative impacts assessments in permitting decisions. Cumulative impacts exist when multiple environmental pollution burdens co-occur alongside existing socio-economic stressors. Cumulative impacts analysis has long been recognized as a critical strategy for advancing environmental justice. Yet, doing so requires moving beyond the traditional medium-based silos of environmental law and instead, taking a nexus-based approach. Until recently, the federal government had made significant advances to understanding and addressing cumulative impacts. During the Biden Administration, EPA even began to use cumulative impacts analysis as part of its enforcement activities. Although EPA faced a setback when a U.S. District Court issued an unfavorable court decision in 2024 that applied to the state of Louisiana, that did not stop EPA’s overall efforts; in fact, in the waning days of the Biden Administration, EPA released an “Interim Framework for Advancing Consideration of Cumulative Impacts” for public comment. Although the second Trump Administration has since halted and rolled back many of these initiatives, the effort to incorporate cumulative impacts into permitting decisions continues at the state level. By the end of 2024, eight states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont) had codified a requirement for cumulative impacts analysis to be considered in permitting. In collaboration with academics and non-profit organizations, states also continue to meet and share ideas on cumulative impact protections. The field of cumulative impacts analysis highlights the challenges and opportunities for developing new linkages across laws and legal regimes so that our environmental laws can in fact provide protection for all.

• James May | Washburn University School of Law | Richard S. Righter Distinguished Professor of Law

  On Whether Constitutional Environmental Rights Improve Environmental Outcomes 

  This talk provides a comprehensive empirical review of studies investigating the relationship between constitutional environmental rights (CERs) and measurable environmental outcomes. Examining global, regional, and sectoral research, it finds that while CERs sometimes correlate and often associate with improved environmental indicators—such as ecological footprints, greenhouse gas emissions, water access, and sustainable development—causation remains unproven due to methodological limitations like correlation/causation confusion, data quality issues, and endogeneity. The effectiveness of CERs appears highly dependent on state capacity, governance quality, and supportive institutional frameworks. Some studies suggest statistically significant associations, particularly in high-income countries and where procedural rights are included, but results are mixed and context-specific. The chapter concludes that CERs should be understood as components within a broader matrix of legal, political, and economic structures rather than as panaceas. It calls for more nuanced, longitudinal, and context-sensitive research to clarify causal pathways and practical impacts.

• J.B. Ruhl | Vanderbilt University Law School | David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair in Law; Director, Program on Law and Innovation; Co-Director, Energy, Environment and Land Use Program

  The Tipping Point Nexus 

  Environmental law is a complex network of institutions and instruments which, taken as a whole, we’d like to think encompasses human engagement with the Earth system. There are many points of nexus—or “nodes”—within and between the environmental law system and the Earth system. These nodes, however, were constructed over time based on the premise that human society was the agent of change acting on an Earth system that displayed relative stability for centuries. When “rewiring” was needed to address new problems, such as water pollution and air pollutions, it generally was to the environmental law system—the Earth system’s “wiring” remained largely the same. That premise will soon be obsolete, as the Earth system is approaching, and in some cases has passed, critical “tipping points” driving massive shifts in the many systems comprising the holistic Earth system. Earth’s nodes, in other words, are rewiring as a result of the accumulation of severe disruptions human society has imposed over the span of several centuries. What does this mean for the rewiring of environmental law. How does environmental law define and manage a nexus to Earth system tipping points?

2:45- 3 p.m. | Closing Remarks

Cost

The symposium is free and open to the public, but registration will be required.

Program Accessbility

If you require a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this event, please contact Debbie Schmidt by February 20 at drschmidt@ku.edu or 785-864-5078, 771 TTY.

Symosium Issue

Scholarship associated with the symposium will be published  in a special issue of the Kansas Law Review.