Faculty
Robert Percival
Robert F. Stanton Professor of Law and
Director, Environmental Law Program
Fax: (410) 706-2184
E-mail:
Office: 481
BA, 1972, Macalester College
MA, 1978, JD, 1978, Stanford University
Professor Percival joined the Maryland faculty in 1987 after serving as senior attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. While in law school, he served as managing editor of the Stanford Law Review and was named the Nathan Abbott Scholar for graduating first in his class. Percival served as a law clerk for Judge Shirley M. Hufstedler of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White. Percival also served as a special assistant to the first U.S. Secretary of Education.
Percival is internationally recognized as a leading scholar in environmental law. For two decades he has been the principal author of the country's most widely used casebook in environmental law, Environmental Regulation: Law, Science & Policy, now in its sixth edition (http://www.erlsp.com). He is the author of nearly 100 publications that primarily focus on environmental law, as well as federalism, presidential powers, regulatory policy and legal history. Percival has taught as a visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School in 2000 and 2009 and at Georgetown University Law Center in 2005 and 2011. He currently teaches Environmental Law, a Global Environmental Law Seminar, Constitutional Law, and Administrative Law. In 2007 he was named the University's 'Teacher of the Year.'
During the spring semester 2008 Percival taught as a J. William Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. In 1994 taught as a Fulbright scholar at Comenius University Law School in Slovakia. Percival is a highly popular guest lecturer. He has presented hundreds of guest lectures, paper presentations, and workshops in 25 countries on six continents. In 2009 he represented the U.S. Department of State on a lecture tour of China. He has delivered guest lectures at more than 40 U.S. academic institutions, at 21 Chinese universities and before numerous professional associations and government agencies. Percival has served as the Natural Resource Law Institute Distinguished Visitor at Lewis & Clark College of Law and as a visiting professor of law at the University of Chile where he helped establish South America's first environmental law clinic. He also has taught summer courses at Shandong University, Vermont Law School, the University of British Columbia and the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.
Percival has played a leading role in conceptualizing the new field of global environmental law. He maintains a website and weekly blog on this subject which appears at http://www.globalenvironmentallaw.com and at http://globalenvironmentallaw.blogspot.com. Percival is a member of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law and one of the founding members of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law, which held its 10th Annual Colloquium at the University of Maryland in July 2012. In April 2009 he delivered Pace Law School's Lloyd K. Garrison Lecture on 'The Globalization of Environmental Law.'
Percival has served on the Board of Directors of the Environmental Law Institute and as co-chair of the steering committee of the D.C. Bar's Section on Environmental, Energy and Natural Resources Law. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute. Percival has served as the contributing editor for Environment and Natural Resources for the Federal Circuit Bar Journal, as a special master for the U.S. District Court of Maryland, and as a member of the state of Maryland's Environmental Restoration and Development Task Force. He is a member of the American College of Environmental Lawyers and the National Committee on U.S./China Relations.
Books
Environmental Regulation: Law, Science & Policy (1992; 2d ed. 1996; 3d ed 2000; 4th ed., 2003; 5th ed. 2006; 6th ed. 2009; 7th ed. forthcoming 2013) (with others).
Environmental Law: Statutory and Case Supplement 2012-2013 (2012) (with Christopher H. Schroeder).
Law and the Environment: A Multidisciplinary Reader (1997) (editor, with Dorothy C. Alevizatos).
The Roots of Justice: Crime and Punishment in Alameda County, California, 1870-1910 (1981) (with Lawrence M. Friedman).
Articles
Human Rights and the Evolution of Global Environmental Law, in 2 Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 1 (Subhram Rajkhowa & Stuti Deka eds., 2013). [Full Text]
Can He Legally Do That? Does the President Have Directive Authority Over Agency Regulatory Decisions?, 37 Administrative Law & Regulatory Law News 4 (Spring 2012). [Full Text]
CERCLA in a Global Context, 41 Southwestern Law Review 727 (2012) (with Katherine H. Cooper and Matthew M. Gravens). [Full Text]
Setting the Bar for "Injury" in Environmental Cases: How Low Can it Go?, 42 Environmental Law Reporter 10785 (2012) (with John C. Cruden, Carla Burke, and John Guttmann). [Full Text]
International Responsibility and Liability for Environmental Harm, in Routledge Handbook of International Environmental Law 681 (Shawkat Alam et al. eds., 2012). [Abstract]
Global Law and the Environment, 86 Washington Law Review 579 (2011). [Full Text]
China’s ‘Green Leap Forward’ Toward Global Environmental Leadership, 12 Vermont Journal of Environmental Law 633 (2011). [Full Text]
Who’s in Charge? Does the President Have Directive Authority over Agency Regulatory Decisions?, 79 Fordham Law Review 2487 (2011). [Full Text]
Liability for Environmental Harm and Emerging Global Environmental Law, 25 Maryland Journal of International Law 37 (2010). [Full Text]
La Responsabilidad por Daño Ambiental Global y la Evolución en las Relaciones entre el Derecho Público y Privado (Liability for Global Environmental Damage and the Evolution in the Relationship Between Public and Private Law), in Derecho Ambiental en Tiempos de Reformas (Environmental Law in Times of Reform) 99 (V. Duran Medina et al. eds., 2010). [Full Text]
The Emergence of Global Environmental Law, 36 Ecology Law Quarterly 101 (2009) (with Tseming Yang). [Full Text]
The Globalization of Environmental Law, 26 Pace Environmental Law Review 451 (2009). [Full Text]
Massachusetts v. EPA: Escaping the Common Law’s Growing Shadow, 2007 Supreme Court Review 111 (2008). [Full Text]
Environmental Law in the 21st Century , in International Environmental Law and Comparative Environmental Law Review 204 (Wang Xi ed., 2008) (translated into Chinese by Professor Li Yanfang). [Full Text]
El Surgimiento del Derecho Ambiental Global (The Emergence of Global Environmental Law), in Desarrollo Sustentable: Gobernanza y Derecho 11 (V. Duran, S. Montenegro & P. Moraga eds., 2008) (translation into Spanish by Ada I. Diaz-Hernandez). [Full Text]
Environmental Law in the Twenty-First Century, 25 Virginia Environmental Law Journal 1 (2007).
Who's Afraid of the Precautionary Principle?, 23 Pace Environmental Law Review 21 (2006). [Full Text]
Environmental Law in the Supreme Court: Highlights from the Blackmun Papers, 35 Environmental Law Reporter 10637 (2005). [Full Text]
Forum: Is Chinese Environmental Law up to the Task?, Environmental Forum, Sept. - Oct. 2005, at 44.
The Clean Water Act and the Demise of the Federal Common Law of Interstate Nuisance, 55 Alabama Law Review 717 (2004).
Resolucion de Conflictos Ambientales: Lecciones Aprendidas de la Historia de la Contaminacion de las Fundiciones de Minerales, in Prevencion y Solucion de Conflictos Ambientales Vias Administrativas, Jurisdiccionales y Alternativas 399 (2004).
Global Environmental Accountability: The Missing Link in the Pursuit of Sustainable Development?, in The Moral Austerity of Environmental Decision Making: Sustainability, Democracy and Normative Argument in Policy and Law (J. M. Gilroy & J. Bowersox, eds. 2002).
"Greening" the Constitution: Harmonizing Environmental and Constitutional Values, 32 Environmental Law 809 (2002).
Skeptical environmentalist or statistical spin-doctor?: Bjorn Lomborg and the Relationship between Environmental Law and Environmental Process, 53 Case Western Reserve Law Review 263 (2002).
Separation of Powers, the Presidency and the Environment, 21 Journal of Land, Resources and Environmental Law 25 (2001).
Escaping the Common Law’s Shadow: Standing in the light of Laidlaw, 12 Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum 119 (2001) (with Joanna B. Goger).
Presidential Management of the Administrative State: The Not-so-Unitary Executive, 51 Duke Law Journal 963 (2001).
Water Pollution Control: Lessons from Transnational Experience, in Derecho Del Medio Ambiente Congreso Internacional 273 (1998).
Environmental Legislation and the Problem of Collective Action, 9 Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum, 9 (1998).
Regulatory Evolution and the Future of Environmental Policy, 1997 University of Chicago Legal Forum 159.
Responding to Environmental Risk: A Pluralistic Perspective, 14 Environmental Law Review 513 (1997).
Environmental Federalism: Historical Roots and Contemporary Models, 54 Maryland Law Review 1141 (1995).
Overcoming Interpretive Formalism: Legislative Reversals of Judicial Constructions of Sovereign Immunity Waivers in the Environmental Statutes, 43 Washington University Journal of Urban and Contemporary Law, 221 (1993).
The Ecology of Environmental Conflict: Risk, Uncertainty and the Transformation of Environmental Policy Disputes, 12 Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 209 (1992).
Checks without Balance: Executive Office Oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency, Law and Contemporary Problems, Autumn 1991, at 127.
Protecting Coastal and Estuarine Resources: Confronting the Gulf between the Promise and Product of Environmental Regulation, 47 Maryland Law Review 341 (1988).
Restoring Regulatory Policy to Serve the Public Interest, in Winning America: Ideas and Leadership for the 1990s, at 48 (Raskin & Hartman, eds. 1988).
The Organometals: Impact of Accidental Exposure and Experimental Data on Regulatory Policy, in Neurotoxicants and Neurobiological Function: Effects of Organoheavy Metals 328 (Tilson & Sparber, eds. 1987) (with Ellen K. Silbergeld).
The Processing of Felonies in the Superior Court of Alameda County, 5 Law and History Review 413 (1987) (with Lawrence M. Friedman).
The Bounds of Consent: Consent Decrees, Settlements and Federal Environmental Policymaking, 1987 University of Chicago Legal Forum 327 (1987).
Conservation and Renewable Energy Sources as Supply Alternatives for New York’s Electric Utilities, in The Future of Electrical Energy: A Regional Perspective of an Industry in Transition 126 (Saltzman & Schuler eds., 1986).
The Role of Attorney Fee Shifting in Public Interest Litigation, Law and Contemporary Problems, Winter 1984, at 233.
Who Sues for Divorce?, 5 Journal of Legal Studies 61 (1976) (with Lawrence M. Friedman).
A Tale of Two Courts, 10 Law and Society Review 267 (1976) (with Lawrence M. Friedman).
Recent News featuring Robert Percival
February 27, 2013
Professor Robert Percival of the School of Law spoke live about the BP litigation on the BBC program "Up All Night."
February 25, 2013
Robert Percival, an environmental law professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, is quoted in the BBC story "BP and Gulf states set for trial over oil spill."
January 7, 2013
School of Law professor Robert Percival spoke on the CBC program Lang & O'Leary Exchange segment "Transocean oil spill settlement" as well as on Canada's Business News Network's Business Day PM program.
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