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Fall 2025

5397 Env'l Law for New Technologies - HESTER- 25934

Professor(s): Tracy Hester (DIRECTOR/SUPERVISOR )

Credits: 3

Course Areas: Energy, Natural Resources and Environmental Law 

Time: 4:00p-5:30p  TTH  Location: 221 

Course Outline: Environmental law is usually one of the first and most important tools used to control or challenge the use of new and disruptive technologies. For example, environmental disputes have strongly influenced the development of:

•nanotechnology,
•genetically modified or synthetic biological organisms,
•geoengineering and climate control,
•advanced renewable energy technologies (including biofuels and offshore wind), and
•unconventional fossil fuel production.

In return, emerging technologies can affect the growth and scope of environmental regulations, including toxicogenomics, advanced laboratory detection techniques and remote laser sensing of air pollutants. This course will explore the interplay between environmental law and emerging technologies, including how environmental law creates the demand and market for some new techniques (such as carbon capture and sequestration).

We will invite guest speakers from each of these emerging technological fields to discuss their research and whether they pose environmental legal concerns.

Course Syllabus: Syllabus

Course Notes: (Face-to-Face)  The UH registration system instruction mode for this course is listed in parenthesis. For this instruction mode, instructors and students are expected to normally be physically present in the classroom. If the course has a final examination, it will be in a classroom requiring your physical presence. Other assessment, such as a mid-term exam, may also be in a classroom. Whether this instructor will offer “remote presence” (starting a zoom meeting from the podium computer to enable student remote access on an occasional basis) for part or all of the semester is not known, but students should not rely on an expectation that remote presence will be available.

Prerequisites:  JDs are strongly encouraged to have had Environmental Law or a similar EENR course that will provide familiarity with environmental legal requirements.

First Day Assignments:

Final Exam Schedule:    

This course will have:
Exam:
Paper:


Satisfies Senior Upper Level Writing Requirement: No

Experiential Course Type: No

Bar Course: No

DistanceEd ABA: No

Pass-Fail Student Election: Unavailable (Instructor Preference)

Course Materials

No book required for this course