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UCR opens new environmental law clinic

The Levin College of Law and University of Costa Rica (UCR) Faculty of Law have collaborated on design and development of an environmental law clinic as part of UCR's growing environmental law curriculum. The clinic, known in Latin America as a "Consultorio Juridico," begins formal operations in February 2004 under direction of Adjunct Professor (Profesora Interina) Shirley Sanchez, who also serves as Costa Rica coordinator of the UF/UCR Joint Program in Environmental Law.

The UCR Consultorio, modeled loosely after UF Law's Conservation Clinic, will differ from the traditional consultorio juridico in Costa Rica and elsewhere in Latin America. Traditional consultorios, like traditional law clinics, focus on legal services to the poor and are normally co-located within the offices of the Ministry of Justice or other government agencies that provide legal services, usually focusing on litigation. In addition, Latin American consultorios have not emphasized the pedagogical feedback loop through simulations and other legal skills training. The UCR Consultorio Juridico Ambiental (Environmental Law Clinic) is housed in the UCR law school and is freestanding, meaning it can develop its own clients as long as they are pursuing the public interest in a "healthy and ecologically balanced environment" (Article 50, Constitution of Costa Rica). The new Consultorio office includes ample workspace for students and staff, computers, a telephone, ethernet access and a conference room on the newly remodeled sixth floor of the UCR law school.

UF College of Law Legal Skills Professor Tom Ankersen has been assisting Sanchez in development of the clinic's client base and pedagogy. Four volunteer UCR law students who participated in the 2003 UF/UCR Summer Program agreed to participate in a clinic demonstration project the following semester in order to develop the consultorio's initial portfolio. Several of these projects were carried forward from projects developed and executed by 2003 UF/UCR Summer Program Clinic students, who have remained formally and informally involved in projects during the 2003-04 UF academic year. Current projects include litigation and dispute resolution assistance in a case involving a toxic spill and fish kill, investigation into the possible theft of genetic resources for commercialization in the United States, a petition to declare an internationally listed wetland as threatened under the Ramsar Convention, and pursuit of an executive order to decree a coastal scenic highway. The Consultorio also is researching the effect of pending expropriation claims by U.S. citizens on access to U.S. foreign assistance programs such as debt for nature swaps. Students from UF and other U.S. law schools who participate in the 2004 Conservation Clinic in Costa Rica - and thereafter - will benefit by being able to join in these and other ongoing consultorio projects and its developing comparative legal skills pedagogy.

The new UCR Consultorio Juridico Ambiental will be third in a series of developments designed to make the UCR law school an international "Center of Environmental Law Excellence," a designation recently conferred on the law school by the IUCN-World Conservation Union Commission on Environmental Law at the inaugural meeting of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law in Shanghai China. Costa Rica Program Director/UF Center for Governmental Responsibility Conservation Clinic Director Thomas Ankersen and UCR Law Dean/Environmental Law Professor Rafael Gonzalez Ballar attended the Shanghai meeting, presided over by Professor Nicolas Robinson of Pace Law School. Under Dean Gonzalez Ballar's tenure, the UCR law school also recently created an LLM (Maestría) in environmental law and established an environmental law research institute. Support for these efforts was provided by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to the University of Florida Levin College of Law.