UM Carey Law Role in Clean Water Act Case
UM Carey School of Law educates students to become outstanding leaders in law and civic life. Its nationally recognized law clinics are a critical tool for fulfilling that mission. They are also a vital state resource, providing more than 110,000 hours of free legal services every year to Maryland residents – a volume comparable to a 60-person law firm—in nearly every area of the public interest.
Since 2010, elected state officials have not only criticized the Law School’s Environmental Law Clinic, but introduced legislation in an attempt to restrict the scope and support of all the school’s clinics. Their stated concern: the Environmental Law Clinic’s decision to represent Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental citizens group, which has sued Perdue Farms and one of its local poultry growers for polluting the Chesapeake Bay, a violation of the federal Clean Water Act.
Although legislative proposals have differed, most critics, “question whether a law school, funded in part by tax dollars, should represent clients in a lawsuit that places in tension the health of our environment and the economic interests of some within the State,” observed UM Carey Dean Phoebe Haddon in 2010. But, as she also pointed out at that time, “The Clinic’s clients are residents of Maryland too, including a nonprofit environmental organization based on the Eastern Shore with more than 700 members.”
Perdue Farms and the local poultry grower, Hudson Farm, deny all allegations against them. However, a federal judge rejected their requests to dismiss the case. He recently denied motions for summary judgment from all parties. A trial is scheduled for April 2012.
Important issues are at the heart of the controversy surrounding the clinic’s role in this suit, including the ability of legal cases to proceed through the courts without political interference, the freedom of educators to determine curricula, and the capacity of law clinics to work on cases that serve the public interest and expand access to justice.
In compliance with the Maryland code governing the ethical behavior of lawyers, the School will not comment on matters that have not yet been addressed in court.
However, as a public academic institution, the Law School also has a responsibility to be transparent and to help the people of Maryland understand how their tax dollars are being used. This web site is intended to honor that responsibility. In it you will find unedited court documents from all parties to the case, legislative proposals, as well as media reports, key correspondence, and background material that places clinical law programs and commercial poultry chicken production in a broader context
