Rebecca Bratspies

CUER Director & Founder Rebecca Bratspies

CUER Director & Founder Rebecca Bratspies

Rebecca Bratspies, Professor and Director of CUER, joined the faculty of CUNY Law in 2004. Her teaching and scholarly research focus on environmental and public international law, with a particular emphasis on how legal systems govern the global commons and how law can further sustainable development. She has published widely on the topics of environmental liability, regulatory uncertainty, regulation of international fisheries, and regulation of genetically modified food crops. Among her more notable publications in the fields of environmental and international law are Progress in International Law (with Russell A. Miller-Martinus Nijhoff 2008); Transboundary Harm In International Law: Lessons from the Trail Smelter Arbitration (with Russell A. Miller – Cambridge University Press, 2006), and Rethinking Decision-making in International Law: A Process-Oriented Inquiry into Sustainable Development, 32 Yale Journal of International Law 363 (2007). Professor Bratspies is a member-scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform. In 2009, she was appointed to a three year term on the ABA Standing Committee on Environmental Law.?? She participates in the BioLaw, Agricultural Law, and Intlawgrrls blogs. Before entering academia, Professor Bratspies served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable C. Arlen Beam of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. In 1994, she was selected to be a Henry Luce Foundation Scholar. Professor Bratspies spent a year seconded to the Republic of China (Taiwan) Environmental Protection Administration. Upon her return to the United States, she was a litigation associate with Dechert, Price and Rhoads where she worked with civil rights groups to bring two victorious class action suits challenging Pennsylvania’s implementation of welfare reform. She also advised numerous clients on issues of environmental compliance.?? Before joining the CUNY faculty in 2004, Professor Bratspies was an Associate Professor at the University of Idaho College of Law. She has also been an acting Assistant Professor of Law and Lawyering at New York University and a visiting Associate Professor at Michigan State School of Law.?? Professor Bratspies earned her B.A. in biology from Wesleyan University and her J.D., cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania.

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