The Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights to Offer Continuing Legal Education Course on “Rights of Nature” with National Academy of Continuing Legal Education-5/5/2021
Contact:
Thomas Linzey, Senior Attorney, CDER
(509) 474-9761
tal@pa.net
Spokane, Washington– The Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER) announced today it has created a three-hour legal education credit course focused on the emerging field of the rights of nature.
The course will be offered through the national legal education company, the National Academy of Continuing Legal Education. NACLE provides accredited continuing legal education (CLE) courses throughout the United States in forty-two states, as well as the U.S. Virgin Islands and Washington, D.C. The company offers both live and pre-recorded legal education classes to attorneys across the country.
The course is titled “The Rights of Nature: Theory, Laws, and Emerging Jurisprudence.” It focuses on the theory behind recognizing legally enforceable rights of ecosystems and nature, analyzes local laws adopted in the U.S. which recognize those rights, and examines jurisprudence in the U.S. and globally which recognize and enforce those rights. It concludes with a panel discussion focused on the biggest challenges facing this emerging field of environmental law. The course will be offered for three hours of substantive credit, as a pre-recorded course.
The course is being taught by lawyers from Washington State, New Mexico, Florida, and California who have backgrounds in rights of nature litigation, laws, and legal theory. The lead lecturer is Thomas Linzey, who is widely recognized as the founder of the contemporary rights of nature movement, a movement which has resulted in the adoption of over three dozen local rights of nature laws in the U.S. and in national laws and court decisions around the world. As part of that movement, Linzey was involved in the drafting of rights of nature provisions in the 2008 Ecuadorian Constitution. Linzey will be joined by attorneys Daniel Brannen, Mel Martin, and Nayeli Maxson Velazquez.
Mari Margil, the Executive Director of CDER, stated, “We are excited to be working with a nationally-established legal education firm to offer this first-in-the-country continuing legal education program to introduce lawyers across the U.S. to the emerging field of legally enforceable rights of nature. As adoption and enforcement of these laws expands, there will be a need for lawyers to support and litigate rights of nature laws, and this course can begin to prepare them for that role.”
NACLE declared, “This is part of our ongoing effort to provide legal education curriculum on cutting-edge developments in various areas of law. As the first national course to focus on this emerging field of recognizing legally enforceable rights for nature and ecosystems, we hope to continue our role in bringing the best that legal education can offer to attorneys across the country.”
The recorded CLE course will be available in June on the webpage of NACLE, at www.nacle.com.