Zygmunt J. B. Plater

Zygmunt Jan Broël Plater, Professor, Boston College Law School. A.B., Princeton University; J.D., Yale University; LL.M., S.J.D., University of Michigan. Professor Plater is a member of the bar of the District of Columbia and Tennessee, and teaches and writes in the fields of environmental law, property & land use law, administrative process, and is Coordinator of Boston College Law School's Land & Envtl. Law Program, with further interests in comparative international law and public interest litigation. He has taught on seven law faculties--fired from only one--has been a consultant on environmental and landuse law issues in Ethiopia, Costa Rica, Colombia, Nepal, and Japan; and has worked on national endangered species legislation and litigation in the USA -- most notoriously six years spent litigating the case of the endangered snail darter fish vs. TVA's Tellico Dam in federal district court, circuit court of appeals, and in the Supreme Court, and through extended administrative and congressional hearings. Professor Plater worked as chair of the State of Alaska's Oil Spill Commission legal research task force responding to the Exxon-Valdez disaster, has been a legal consultant in many environmental law cases, has authored many law review articles, and is lead author of the widely-adopted environmental law coursebook ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND POLICY: NATURE, LAW, AND SOCIETY (4th edition 2010 from Aspen Publishers). In 2000, by vote of Boston College Law School's graduating senior class, he won the school's Faculty Excellence Award. In 2005 he was awarded the 2005 David Brower Lifetime Achievement Award at the 23d International Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, Eugene Oregon. In 2010, drawing upon his work chairing the legal research task force for the State of Alaska Oil Spill Commission in 1989-90, he acted as a consultant and commentator for government staff and media coping with the BP Deepwater Horizon Blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, initiating a national symposium on the disaster, and, with 37 students, organizing a major Submission to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. http://www.bc.edu/environmentallaw In 2011, by student vote, he was named Public Interest Law Professor of the Year, Boston College Public Interest Law Foundation. In 2013 he published THE SNAIL DARTER & THE DAM--HOW PORK-BARREL POLITICS ENDANGERED A LITTLE FISH AND KILLED A RIVER (Yale U. Press) chronicling the citizens' litigation he and his students carried up through multiple layers of national government in the 1970s.