Professor Alan Weinstein

Professor Weinstein presented Friday, May 8 at the Inaugural Annual Sustainability Conference for Legal Educators at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. More than 60 law faculty members from over 50 law schools attended, including the law schools at: Berkeley, NYU, Stanford, Vanderbilt & Yale. Professor Weinstein’s presentation, “What Can Legal Educators Learn About Sustainability from Urban Planning Researchers and Practitioners?,” argued that the answer to his question is “a great deal.” Comparing the law literature on Sustainability with the planning literature, Professor Weinstein found that the planning literature focused significantly more on: (1) empirical data, particularly as regards actual implementation; (2) the need to balance Sustainability policy goals with other critical goals — particularly those associated with “at-risk” groups — such as social equity, and enhanced employment opportunities; and (3) the role of design-based policies to achieve Sustainability goals. He argued that these findings strongly suggest that: (1) legal scholars could obtain useful information from the planning literature, particularly empirical data; and (2) legal scholars should seek opportunities for collaborative projects with planning researchers and practitioners.