Professor Hirsch Wins Award for Environmental Textbook

March 19, 2004

Professor Dennis Hirsch with Environmental Law Practice: Problems and Exercises for Skills Development, the book he co-wrote with Professor Jerry Anderson of Drake Law School

Capital University Law School Professor Dennis D. Hirsch won an award at the 2003 CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution Awards Program. Hirsch and co-author Professor Jerry Anderson of Drake Law School were awarded Honorable Mention in the “Problem Solving in the Law School Curriculum” category for their book Environmental Law Practice: Problems and Exercises for Skills Development (2nd ed., Carolina Academic Press, 2003). Criteria for the award focused on a book’s ability to teach problem solving theory and practice effectively.

Environmental Law Practice: Problems and Exercises for Skills Development seeks to introduce students to the practice of environmental law and to build their skills in this area. In addition to teaching substantive law, it provides hypothetical problems, exercises and role playing that let students experience the work of a practicing environmental attorney.

The inspiration for the book came from two gaps perceived by Hirsch and Anderson in the curriculum commonly provided by law schools. First, law schools typically focus on case law and do not prepare law students to work with regulatory materials such as statutes, agency regulations and agency guidance documents – the research materials that environmental attorneys use most often. Second, law schools typically do not provide much training in regulatory practice, particularly in the work of the environmental attorney. “An environmental attorney not only litigates, but also counsels clients, helps set policies, negotiates with the agency and defends or enforces legal actions. We made it our goal to address these gaps,” says Hirsch.

Professor Zyg Plater of Boston College Law School confirms the successful attainment of Hirsch and Anderson’s goal. Plater writes, “One of the most striking failures of most law schools’ curriculum design is the failure to teach the art of hands-on regulatory practice… Jerry Anderson and Dennis Hirsch provide the cure.”

Hirsch joined the Capital law faculty in 1998 and teaches Environmental Law, Air Pollution Law and Policy, Environmental Practicum, and Property I and II. Upon graduating from Yale Law School, Hirsch clerked for Judge John M. Walker, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He then practiced environmental law and appellate litigation with Sidley & Austin in Washington, D.C., and, subsequently, taught Environmental Law and Property at Drake University Law School and Notre Dame Law School. He currently serves as Chair of the American Bar Association, Section of Environment, Energy and Resources, Committee on Innovation, Management Systems and Trading. He serves as faculty advisor to the Environmental Law Society and as coach of the Environmental Moot Court Team.