ENV 852b/law 21769 () / 2024-2025
Food Systems & US Environmental Law
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Credits: 2 or 3
Spring 2025: W, 4:10-6:00, SLB TBD |
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This course is capped at 18 students. Preference for this course are students currently enrolled at the Yale Law school and students in their last semester.
Students should know that this course is primarily a law and policy course, and should be ready to engage with legal material, ideally would have some experience doing so.
Classes meet, Wed 4:10-6:00 at Yale Law school. First class is Wednesday, January 15 and follows Yale Law school calendar.
Survey: https://forms.gle/ypEg4LFeotRAz5Jw7 is due by 5pm Est, Monday, January 6, 2025 . Students will receive notification by Wednesday, January 8, 2025 and will have the course preregistered for them.
Course Description:
2 credits. We eat food every day. The food system, from agricultural production to processing to consumption and waste, shapes our lives. Less well known, the food system profoundly affects our environment, climate, and public health. This course examines the environmental impact of modern agriculture and the U.S. laws that attempt to reduce those harms. In so doing, we explore different methods of oversight, from common law to various types of regulation to targeted subsidies, and wrestle with the challenges of limiting harms from a sprawling, diverse, diffuse, and poorly understood system.
Today’s industrial food system bears little relation to the bucolic family farms we imagine – and that were in Congress’s mind in the 1970s when it passed most modern environmental laws. Since then, U.S. agriculture has grown increasingly concentrated and industrial. Most row crops are monocultures dependent on high doses of fertilizers and pesticides and most meat is produced in “concentrated animal feeding operations” that house thousands or even millions of animals in small areas. In terms of high output of apparently inexpensive food (and fuel and fiber), the system is a success. On the other hand, the increased industrialization, without the environmental safeguards applicable to other industries, has led to agriculture being a major source of environmental and health harm. Agriculture is the main driver of biodiversity loss, the largest source of water pollution and one of the largest sources of air and toxic pollution. It drives over a third of climate change.
US environmental law directly and indirectly seeks to reduce these harms, although often in partial, ineffective, or unenforceable ways. While alternative production systems can produce sufficient food with less impact, the law rarely encourages and often discourages such approaches. The long history of discrimination in farm policy leaves a legacy that compounds the challenge. This course studies existing US environmental law and its strengths and weaknesses, and explores alternative approaches to environmental and public health protections. Several short papers and in-class presentations, as well as a final paper and presentation are required for all students. Students who write a longer paper for Substantial Paper credit may earn a third credit.
Course questions can be directed to Peter Lehner (peter.lehner@yale.edu)