NYU launches new Marron Institute for Cities and the Urban Environment

Feb 14, ’13

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NYU launched a new center, the Marron Institute on Cities and the Urban Environment, in a ceremony on February 13 at the Law School featuring remarks by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as well as NYU President and Dean Emeritus John Sexton and Dean Richard Revesz, the new institute’s director.

Donald B. Marron, founder and current chairman of Lightyear Capital, former chairman of Paine Webber, and a highly successful entrepreneur and philanthropist who provided a $40 million gift to fund the new institute, expressed great enthusiasm about its mission: “This is an entrepreneur’s dream. This is a startup to all startups. It’s the start of a teaching institution that’s going to do more than teach. It’s got a great management team led by John and by Ricky. It has an extraordinary faculty, and it has researching capabilities that allow you to leverage all this talent very quickly.”

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Former White House Environmental Officials Teach at NYU Law

Sep 16, ’12

Professors Amelia Salzman, Jody Freeman and Nathaniel Keohane (l-r)

This year, three former environmental officials in the Obama White House are teaching at NYU Law: Jody Freeman, Counselor for Energy and Climate Change (2009-10); Nathaniel Keohane, Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Environment in the National Economic Council (2011-2012); and Amelia Salzman, Associate Director for Policy Outreach at the Council on Environmental Quality in (2009-2011).

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Institute for Policy Integrity Submits Public Comments

Sep 5, ’12

The Institute for Policy Integrity uses economic analysis and law to promote better environmental, health, and consumer protection regulations.  During the past year, Policy Integrity submitted 12 sets of detailed public comments to federal regulatory agencies on issues like mercury controls, fuel efficiency standards, and criminal sentencing guidelines. The organization was also the only non-profit permitted to submit an amicus brief for EPA on its tailoring rule, designed to exempt small polluters from strict Clean Air Act permitting requirements.

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Cass Sunstein Discusses Cost-Benefit Analysis in Regulation

May 7, ’12

Cass Sunstein, the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the Office of Management and Budget and one of the most prolific and frequently cited legal academics, detailed some of the positive results of using cost-benefit analysis in overseeing the Obama administration’s regulatory agenda when he spoke at NYU Law on April 30.

Cass Sunstein, Administrator of OIRA

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Regulatory Red Herring: The Role of Job Impact Analyses in Environmental Policy Debates

Apr 3, ’12

The current debate on jobs and environmental regulation too often relies on thinly-supported forecasts about jobs “killed” or “created” by public protections. In this debate, the larger costs and benefits of protections for clean air or water can get lost.

In Regulatory Red Herring, the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU Law looks at how economics can be used to estimate or distort the effects of environmental regulation on layoffs and hiring. Through the choice of datasets or economic models, job impact analyses used in advocacy can tell widely different stories. These modeling tools have important limitations that are rarely communicated, leading to misunderstanding and counterproductive political debates.

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Cities Launch Solutions to Global Environmental Problems

Mar 5, ’12

The NYU Environmental Law Journal, NYU Environmental Law Society, and the Furman Center for Real Estate and Public Policy cosponsored a symposium on “Localities in the Lead: The Path of Environmental Progress through New York City.” Introducing the event, Professor Katrina Wyman discussed what she described as a relatively new era of focusing on environmental policy at the municipal level. “Municipalities aren’t just taking an interest in traditionally local issues, like land use or brown field,” she said, “but also taking an interest in the preeminent global environmental issue of our time: climate change.”

New York City in particular has been extremely active in recent years in environmental policy, Wyman said, pointing to the PlaNYC initiative. Because of this, she said, the city serves as a good case study for thinking through the challenges involved in working through environmental policy at a municipal level.

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Furman Center wins prestigious MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions

Feb 16, ’12

On February 16, the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy received the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions in recognition of its excellence in providing policymakers with objective, relevant research to address pressing issues for neighborhoods in New York City and nationwide. The award’s $1 million grant will allow the Furman Center to expand its research and policy analysis focus beyond New York City.

Robert Galluci, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, said that the 15 honored organizations “demonstrate exceptional creativity and effectiveness. They provide new ways to address old problems. They generate provocative ideas and they reframe well-worn debates. And their impact is altogether disproportionate to their size.”

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Rethinking Climate Change: Towards an Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice

Feb 5, ’12

On February 2, Johnson Toribiong, president of Palau and Tillman Thomas, prime minister of Grenada hosted a diplomatic reception at the law school to build support for a UN General Assembly resolution reqesting International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the legal responsibility of countries for climate change under international law. An ICJ advisory opinion may be requested by a simple majority of UN members. This effort by Palau and Grenada is in conjunction with a number of other small island countries, who are concerned about the impact of rising sea levels that are resulting from climate change.

President of Palau Johnson Toribiong

“The truth is that nothing we or other Pacific countries do will stem the rising tides or the flood of global emissions. We need everyone to buy in or it won’t work. An ICJ advisory opinion would give us the guidance we need on what all States must do,“ said President Toribiong. “I am pleased that deliberations on a possible resolution have begun here in New York. But there is a long way to go.”

The UN General Assembly resolution is expected to be introduced in the autumn. Attending the reception along with the President and Prime Minister were their Ambassadors to the UN, Stuart Beck (of Palau) and Dessima Williams (of Grenada). They were joined by nearly 100 other UN Ambassadors, Deputy Permanent Representatives and legal advisors.

NYU law students Julian Arato and Ben Heath with Palauan Ambassador to the UN, Stuart Beck and President Toribiong

Two NYU law students and IILJ scholars, Julian Arato (’11, LL.M.’12) and Ben Heath (’11, LL.M.’12) have been assisting the Mission of Palau by providing legal advice on the issue. Since the Mission of Palau was opened in 2004, NYU law students have provided legal assistance on a number of issues, including international environmental law and law of the sea.

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Global Climate Finance Project holds workshop in Abu Dhabi

Jan 20, ’12

Institutions for climate finance and the new Green Climate Fund were the two main topics of discussion at the workshop on Climate Finance held in Abu Dhabi last week, hosted at the NYU Abu Dhabi campus by the Global Climate Finance Project, together with the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This was the Project’s third workshop in the UAE.

The workshop started on Monday, January 9th, bringing local UAE government officials together with an impressive group of experts drawing from academia, the World Bank, various NGOs and the private sector. The workshop heard from three panels discussing the global architecture; the new Green Climate Fund; and tracking climate finance flows. Discussion was so lively that the second day began with a panel originally intended to be on the first day: making transformative investments in climate technologies. The rest of the day was devoted to discussing a paper that will form the opening chapters of a new book on institutions for climate finance that the workshop participants will contribute to. Over the two days, participants engaged in a comprehensive discussion, identifying a number of pressing issues for resolution, areas in which further research is required, and various opportunities for both the UAE and the global community more broadly, to build an effective regime for climate finance.

After the first day of the workshop, Professor Richard Stewart, Professor Daniel Bodansky of Arizona State University and Smita Nakhooda of the Overseas Development Institute held a public discussion on “The Future of International Climate Action,” as a part of the public lectures hosted by NYU Abu Dhabi. The lecture was well attended and was followed by a spirited question and answer session and reception.

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NYU Law and University of Chile School of Law to become global partners

Jan 6, ’12

A December conference on the use of cost-benefit analysis to set domestic environmental policy in developing and emerging economies served a dual purpose as an occasion to seal an agreement between NYU School of Law and the University of Chile School of Law for a scholarly partnership.

Hosted by the University of Chile School of Law and its Center on Regulation and Competition and organized by Professor Gonzalo Moyano (LL.M. ’09), “How to Improve Regulation: Regulatory reform and economic activity” focused on how countries with limited resources can maximize the benefits of environmental protection while reducing the economic costs. Dean Richard Revesz and Michael Livermore ’06, executive director of the NYU Law Institute for Policy Integrity, attended with Meera de Mel ’05, assistant dean for global programs at NYU Law.

This conference is part of a multi-year effort led by Revesz and Livermore to examine how cost-benefit analysis is used in the global context. In October of 2010, the two convened a workshop at the NYU-Abu Dhabi Institute on the topic of “global cost-benefit analysis,” gathering top experts from the world of academia, government, and civil society to discuss the theoretical and practical issues that have arisen as the use of cost-benefit analysis has spread around the world. That two day conference produced a set of case studies from a number of global contexts—from dam building in Panama to air pollution in Singapore—that will serve as the foundation for a book edited by them to be published by Oxford University Press in the fall of 2012.

The first NYU-Chile collaboration will be around the issue of climate finance, with the aim of using Santiago as a hub to develop a regional network of thinkers on this issue. The NYU Global Climate Finance Project, led by Benedict Kingsbury, Murry and Ida Becker Professor of Law, and University Professor Richard Stewart, John Edward Sexton Professor of Law, as well as project director Bryce Rudyk, has charted this new field, bringing together domestic and international policymakers, leaders from the business community, and academic institutions in a collaborative dialogue around the legal dimensions of the emerging global climate finance regime, issues which have largely prevented progress since the Copenhagen Accord that was drafted at the 2009 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The partnership with the University of Chile is a win-win for both institutions, said U.S. Ambassador to Chile Alejandro Wolff. Home to one of Latin America’s most prestigious law faculties, the University is aggressively expanding its international outreach, an effort led by its international relations director, Rodrigo Polanco (LL.M.’04). At the same time, Santiago is quickly becoming one of the developing world’s most entrepreneurial capitals, benefiting enormously from Chile’s steady economic growth, which was acknowledged by its 2010 membership to the OECD.

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