Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson participated in the Pace Environmental Law Review’s Fall 2022 Symposium on Environmental Constitutionalism.  Her panel focused on Environmental Rights – Development and Design. 

Robertson’s talk was titled Considerations for the crafting of subnational constitutional rights to a clean environment.  It focused on her experience teaching an intersession course at the University of Maine School of Law during the period in which the Maine Legislature was considering whether to move a proposed environmental rights constitutional amendment to the voters.  The course considered the environmental rights provisions in six U.S. state constitutions and compared their language and placement to Maine’s proposed environmental rights amendment – the Pine Tree Amendment.  Robertson also worked with Maine legislators to understand the impact of other states’ environmental rights amendments on litigation rates, business, and other concerns.  Although a majority of both houses of the Maine legislature supported the amendment, they did not do so with sufficient margins for the amendment to proceed to the voters. 

The resulting article will be published next summer by the Pace Environmental Law Review.  Robertson is the Steve W. Percy Professor of Law at C|M|LAW and Professor of Environmental Studies at the College of Education and Public Affairs.