Waters of the United States: Interpreting the Clean Water Act
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Video
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Video
What is the Clean Water Act? Have historical interpretations of its scope changed over the years? What are the practical effects of those interpretations on the environment, farmers, and landowners? How is this issue relevant today? Donald Kochan and Robert Glicksman explore these questions as they discuss the scope of the Clean Water Act.
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Professor of Law and Executive Director, Law and Economics Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Donald Kochan is Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Law & Economics Center (LEC). Professor Kochan is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and serves as an Adviser to ALI's Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property project. Professor Kochan is a Nonresident Scholar at the Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a Visiting Scholar in residence during Fall 2018. Before joining the Antonin Scalia Law School faculty, he was the Parker S. Kennedy Professor in Law at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law from 2004 to 2020. From 2003 to 2004, Professor Kochan was an Olin Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law. During 2002-2003, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason’s Scalia Law School.
Professor Kochan’s scholarship focuses on areas of property law, constitutional law, administrative law, local government law, natural resources and environmental law, and law & economics. He has published several books and more than 50 scholarly articles and essays in well-regarded law journals. His work has been cited in more than a dozen state and federal court opinions, in more than 75 briefs filed in state and federal courts including more than 25 filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, in dozens of books and treatises, and in more than 800 scholarly articles.
Professor Kochan received his JD from Cornell Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics and managing editor of the Cornell International Law Journal. During law school, he also served as editor and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy symposium issues in 1997 and 1998. He received his BA from Western Michigan University, magna cum laude, with majors in both political science and philosophy, where he studied as the John W. Gill Medallion Scholar and was honored as the Presidential Scholar (awarded to the top graduate in the political science department).
After graduating from law school, Professor Kochan was a law clerk to The Honorable Richard F. Suhrheinrich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Following his clerkship, Professor Kochan was an associate with the firm of Crowell & Moring LLP in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in natural resources & environmental law as well as tort, products, and consumer civil litigation & legislative affairs.
J. B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law, George Washington University Law School
Robert L. Glicksman is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on environmental, natural resources, and administrative law issues. A graduate of the Cornell Law School, his areas of expertise include environmental, natural resources, administrative, and property law. Before joining the law school faculty in 2009, Professor Glicksman taught at the University of Kansas School of Law, where he joined the faculty in 1982 and was named the holder of the Robert W. Wagstaff Distinguished Professor of Law in 1995. Professor Glicksman has practiced with law firms in DC and New Jersey before joining and while on leave from academia, focusing on environmental, energy, and administrative law issues. He has consulted on various environmental and natural resources law issues, including work for the Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation in Montreal, Canada.
Professor Glicksman has extensive publications in his areas of expertise. He is co-author of two law school casebooks, Environmental Protection: Law and Policy (6th ed. Aspen Publishers) and Administrative Law: Agency Action in Legal Context (Foundation Press); the four-volume treatise, Public Natural Resources Law (2d ed. Thomson/West); two monographs, Risk Regulation at Risk: A Pragmatic Approach, and Pollution Limits and Polluters’ Efforts to Comply: The Role of Government Monitoring and Enforcement, both published by Stanford University Press); and Modern Public Land Law in a Nutshell (3d ed. West). He has written numerous book chapters and articles on a variety of environmental and natural resources law topics, concentrating recently on topics such as climate change, federalism issues in environmental law, the challenges facing the federal land management agencies, and environmental enforcement. His articles have been published in law reviews and journals that include the Texas Law Review, Pennsylvania Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Vanderbilt Law Review, the Wake Forest Law Review, the Indiana Law Journal, the Stanford Environmental Law Journal, the Virginia Environmental Law Journal, and the Administrative Law Review.
Professor Glicksman has been a member scholar for the Center for Progressive Reform since 2002 and a member of the Center’s Board of Directors since 2008.