Environmental disasters such as the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, the nuclear reactor disasters at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and Ukraine's Chernobyl and the hazardous waste problem of the Love Canal in Niagara Falls have generated awareness of how fragile the environment is.
Each year "U.S. News & World Report" ranks the top law school programs. The magazine's specialty rankings such as environmental law are based exclusively on the votes of legal educators, who nominate about 15 schools in each field. The educators chosen to rank environmental law programs are from the previous year's Association of American Law Schools Directory of Law Teachers.
The law school rankings are subjective and subject to change, so students should research each school to find the best choice for their specific interests. The top 10 law schools for environmental law according to "U.S. News" are: 1. Vermont Law School, South Royalton, Vermont; 2. Lewis and Clark Law School, Portland, Oregon; 3. University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California; 4. Pace University Law School, White Plains, New York; 5. Florida State University College of Law, Tallahassee, Florida; 6. Georgetown University Law School, Washington, D.C.; University of Colorado Boulder Law School, Boulder, Colorado; 8. Stanford University Law School, Stanford, California, and University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon; 10. New York University Law School, New York, New York, and University of Maryland Law School, Baltimore, Maryland.