Sequence and Prerequisites: None

Evaluation:   Students will be evaluated on the basis of a paper and presentation, and participation may be considered in final grading.

 In this two-credit graded course, students will learn about the impacts of climate change on tropical ecosystems and hydrological cycles; the effects of agri-business on local people, indigenous species, critical habitat, and migratory corridors; the methods and significance of sustainable forest management practices; the pros and cons of eco-tourism; the impacts of invasive species on both land and coral reef systems; and the legal tools that have succeeded and failed at inducing sustainable practices within a rapidly developing nation.

 The course will expose students to three distinct regions of Costa Rica, each with their own lessons about the regulatory means by which sustainable choices can be encouraged or discouraged.  The course will begin in the legendary tropical “cloud forests” of the Monteverde region in north-western Costa Rica. There students will learn how tropical forests function, explore the effects of climate change on these planetary “lungs,” master how sustainable management practices can protect life-saving biodiversity, investigate how coffee is grown and what its costs are on the local ecosystem, and take up the significance of private land conservation strategies and the challenges of reforestation in the region.

 Students will then travel across the continental divide to the eastern Sarapiqui region of the country to learn about the environmental impacts of large export agriculture. There students will visit a large pineapple plantation, meet with local activists who have been waging a multi-year legal battle to protect local communities from the water pollution caused by agricultural run-off, explore the ways in which consumer choices in far distant countries impact on local practices in ways that create food waste and environmental degradation. From Sarapiqui students will venture on to Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast, where they will critically investigate whether eco-tourism is really an effective tool for conservation, meet with local fishers to learn about the devastating impacts of saltwater invasive species (particularly Lionfish) and the hardships posed by commercial overfishing, and snorkel through the Caribbean coral reef to witness first-hand both its spectacular biodiversity and the impacts of climate change on its sensitive species.

 Prerequisites: Enrollment in this course is by application only. There are no pre-requisites for this course. But priority will be given to students who have provable interests in environmental/sustainability issues, social justice issues, and/or international development/trade issues, all broadly conceived. Such interests can be demonstrated through past course work (in high school, undergraduate studies, and law/graduate work), by enrollment in Fall 2025 courses at the College of Law or within other University of Illinois colleges/departments that address these kinds of issues, as well as by past employment, volunteerism, and travel experiences. If you do not have relevant school, work, volunteer, or travel experience, you may write a short essay explaining your desire to enroll in the course as a means of providing a basis for believing that you will be an active, engaged, committed student whose involvement will be based on course-related interests rather than a desire for mere tourism.

Evaluation: Course requirements will include group work during Fall 2025 to prepare for the guest speakers/lecturers of the course. Each group will be responsible for researching one of the topics to which lectures will be devoted during the course in Costa Rica. Each group will prepare by generating a set of questions that can be transmitted in advance of the lecture to speaker who is slated to give the lecture, and which can be posed to the speaker at the time of the lecture. On the basis of the research into the assigned topic, each group will be tasked with compiling a short set of readings (no more than 20 pages) that will provide the larger class with an appreciation of the importance of the topic.  These readings will be due on Monday, February 16, 2026. Active participation in all of the course learning experiences will be expected and will count toward students’ final grades in the course.  Students should plan to ask questions during field trips and during Q-and-A sessions at the close of lectures, and they should be actively engaged with all facets of the trip. After the January 2026 trip, each student will have a month to write an 8-10-page policy paper on a topic/issue relevant to, or inspired by, the course. The paper should reflect a mastery of the literature that concerns the issue, advance a strong thesis concerning how the issue should be managed, take seriously counter-arguments to that thesis, and demonstrate persuasive and cogent writing skills and an analytically crisp organization. These papers will be due a month after the end of the course travel, on Monday, February 16, 2026.

The class uses sample transactions occurring in a conventional and renewable energy and natural resources practice to illustrate the transaction documents, but most provisions in these documents are present in similar documents for other industries such as real estate and manufacturing.  Course materials will include a limited number of provisions from the Internal Revenue Code, sample transactional documents, and selected law review articles, all of which will be published on a class website.

Sequence and Prerequisites: A federal income tax class and a business organizations class are helpful but absolutely not required.  The student will be provided with all required background in these areas.

Evaluation: Administered final exam, with consideration for exceptional class participation.

IN-CLASS FILMS, GUEST SPEAKERS, AND DISCUSSIONS. Each week, our early-evening class will be devoted to viewing a documentary film or hearing from a guest-speaker whose expertise and research concerns an environmental topic of significance to the course. Our Friday class will then engage with readings that expand on the lessons learned on Thursday.  In addition to discussing excerpts from books and articles written by journalists, scientists, urban planners, environmental activists, lawyers, economists, and philosophers, we will have opportunities for active, in-class exercises that allow for creative thinking and engaging small group activities.  We may also be able to enjoy one or more local field trips to relevant places of interest (organic farms, waste treatment facilities, the local dairy, a prairie restoration project, etc.).

IN THE EVENT THAT THIS BECOMES AN ON-LINE CLASS:  We will regularly meet by Zoom only on Friday from 3:00-4:20 pm.  When a guest speaker is scheduled during a Thursday evening 5-7:00 pm time slot, we will also have a class during that designated time–and the guest lecture and subsequent discussion will proceed via Zoom.  As often as possible (technology and viewing rights permitting), the films that would otherwise have been shown on a Thursday evening will be made available during the previous week so that students will be at liberty to watch it at their own pace.  Students will be asked to do a very short assignment about that film that will be due on the Thursday evening before the Friday class that engages the film’s topic (when we would otherwise have gathered together for the film).  These will not be onerous assignments; they will simply reward the careful viewing of each film.  They will consist of such things as very short reflection pieces, the compilation of a few discussion questions, and other very short but responsive submissions that will be efficient and straightforward once the film has been viewed.

Sequence and Prerequisites: None. Please note that this is an expanded version of Law 798, Environmental Policy Seminar offered in Spring 2024.  Students are not allowed to take both courses.

Evaluation: Three short (750-word) Op Ed’s (worth 60%); in-class participation and other individual and group projects assigned and submitted during class times (worth 40%; 20% will go to film responses if the class is on-line and films are viewed privately, rather than as in-class as a group).

Sequence and Prerequisites: None

Evaluation: Writing Assignments, Presentation, and Multiple-Choice Exam.