Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson spoke as part of the luncheon plenary program at the Ohio Public Interest Environmental Law Conference at The Ohio State University in Columbus on September 19, 2025.  The conference was co-hosted by the Ohio Environmental Council and the Environmental Professionals Network.  The plenary program was entitled “The Role of Judges in Environmental Law and the Procedure of Standing.”  Other participants in the plenary program were Trent Dougherty, a partner at HubayDougherty, Miranda Leppa, Director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Case, and Chris Tavenor, General Council at the Ohio Environmental Council.

Robertson is the Steven W. Percy Professor of Law at CSU|Law and Professor of Environmental Studies at the Levin College of Public Affairs and Education.

Professor Milena Sterio participated as an expert and presenter at the International Humanitarian Law Roundtable in Chautauqua, New York, from August 25-27. Professor Sterio delivered introductory remarks to the Katherine B. Fite lecture (this year’s lecturer was Professor and Judge Meg deGuzman, Temple Law School and the International Residual Mechanism for Yugoslavia and Rwanda). In addition, Professor Sterio moderated a discussion group on the topic of “Crimes Against Children.” The International Humanitarian Law Roundtable is a prestigious conference which has been taking place every year since 2007 in Chautauqua, New York; the conference assembles academics in International Criminal Law as well as prosecutors from various international criminal tribunals. This year, notable prosecutors present included Andrew Cayley and Brenda Hollis from the International Criminal Court; they work on the Ukraine and Palestine investigations respectively.

Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson testified at an Ohio Power Siting Board hearing pertaining to the proposed Frasier Solar energy development project. The hearing concerned whether the OPSB should grant Frasier a Certificate of Public Necessity and Convenience, a necessary precursor to obtaining a permit to construct the facility. Frasier Solar has proposed an industrial scale 120-megawatt solar energy project in Knox County, Ohio. Knox Smart Development, among others, opposes the project. To prepare Robertson for testimony, Environmental Law Fellow Mark Bank, a second-year law student, worked through all of the citizen testimony from three separate public hearings on this matter. Bank and Robertson sorted all of the citizen comments made in opposition to the project into four categories – those that were contrary to fact, those for which the concerns were mitigated through permit conditions or applicant concessions, those that were statements of opinion, and those for which the record neither supported nor disproved the statement. The purpose was to determine whether the citizen concerns amounted to “prominent, one-sided, and compelling opposition to the project – the OPSB’s stated standard for denying the requested certificate. Robertson and Bank found that although comments in opposition outnumber comments in support of the project by more than a 2 to 1 margin, only a few of the comments were not factually incorrect, mitigated, or statements of opinion. Robertson and Bank conducted this research in cooperation with the Ohio Environmental Council and Robertson’s testimony supported the OEC’s efforts to assist Frasier Solar’s effort to increase Ohio’s solar energy production capacity.

Prof. Robertson is the Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law (CSU|Law) and Professor of Environmental Studies (Levin College).